PLM vendors soup up focus on food, process sectors

Process verticals such as food & beverage deal with recipes and specifications rather than parts, but that doesn't mean they can't use product life-cycle management (PLM) software. In fact, process industry PLM vendors are in some cases expanding beyond specification management into broader

Prodika , a PLM vendor founded in 2001, focuses on large food and food service companies with a broad, hosted solution. Prodika only had one referenceable customer as of April—Pittsburgh-based food manufacturer H.J. Heinz —but Heinz is using Prodika on a large scale, with 3,000 users registered on the system, and plans for 6,000 users once fully deployed.

Kenneth Crain, Prodika's founder and chief architect, says specification management acts as a foundation for functions that bridge into supply chain areas—including supplier management and item-data synchronization. Heinz, for example, uses Prodika's data-sync capability as well as functionality to speed label development. "To truly drive efficiencies, it's important to consolidate your business around global specifications, and then use that uniformity across your key business processes," says Crain.

Deb Crosby, chief quality officer for Heinz, says Prodika supports a PLM initiative Heinz calls its VIPER platform (for Vendor Improvement and Product Enhancement and Research Improvement). It's a true PLM effort, she says, because the system not only handles specifications, but also bridges into supplier management areas such as vendor master and scorecarding.

"VIPER has absolutely transformed the procurement side of our business," says Crosby. "We're able to understand our global supply base better than ever before, and not just by supplier, but down to suppliers to each manufacturing location."

Colin Masson, a director with Boston-based AMR Research , says process sector PLM vendors face competition from ERP vendors that have specification management capabilities that excel in the operational aspects of managing established products. "[ERP vendor functionality] tends to fall down from the early stages of product innovation up until product launch," he says.

Other vendors addressing PLM for process sectors include Formation Systems , and OSIsoft , as well as 3M Co. , which offers a packaging development solution. AMR sees packaging as an integral PLM challenge for consumer goods, and notes that some of the major PLM vendors targeting discrete manufacturers have made inroads there.

OSIsoft's offering, acquired from Sequencia, is called ProcessPoint. Tamara Carbaugh, product manager, says OSIsoft has 20 developers working on ProcessPoint, which has been pre-integrated with OSIsoft's RtPM, OSIsoft's real-time performance management solution. Carbaugh says the integration will improve the comparison of target specifications to actuals.

OSIsoft also has worked to make ProcessPoint easy to deploy. Says Carbaugh, "We've turned it from a stand-alone product into an integrated product that installs quickly."

Rory Granos, a Formation Systems VP, says the vendor now has 38 companies using its Optiva system. An implementation methodology and a set of industry templates called Optiva Best Practices are new, says Granos, supporting 30- to 60-day implementations.