Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) has traditionally been a
favorite of the manufacturing sector. Solutions leveraging on PLM
have helped these companies to create a product—right from
the inception stage, to building, selling and improving upon it
based on market research and feedback.
Oracle—which has been playing in the Indian PLM market
since the last two years—has seen most of this adoption from
the automotive sector. Industrial manufacturing has also been one
of the more mature adopters of PLM.
Oracle has observed good demand from high-tech electronic and
electrical equipment makers. The company says it has added more
than six customers over the last one and a half year. The company
expects demand to rise from verticals such as F&B,
pharmaceuticals and insurance.
“Pharmaceuticals, besides F&B, are emerging markets
for PLM,” says Rathina Kumar, Director, Sales Consulting SCM
/PLM Applications - Asia Pacific, Oracle. The company recently
acquired a company that offers PLM solutions specialized for the
pharmaceutical sector.
Says Kumar, “India has seen a spurt in the number of
generic pharmaceutical companies over the last few years. Based on
globally-available discovered drugs, these companies create their
own product offerings which are better suited to the
country’s healthcare requirements. These products are
available at local pricing and offer the same benefits as some
global but more expensive drugs.”
This implies that a lot of companies will create similar drugs
that are meant to solve the same problem and are available as part
of the product portfolios of various pharmaceutical majors. Given
such a highly competitive market, Kumar believes PLM could play a
major role in product development for these companies.
Quality Control
Creating a drug—even though this is based on an already
discovered drug—requires a fair amount of research and
development, analysis and experimentation. Documentation has to be
submitted to regulatory authorities such as FDA to ensure that all
compliance requirements are met. This process has to happen within
a certain timeframe and at a competitive price.
The company could have multiple products being manufactured at a
single time; managing so many product development projects can be a
challenge. A PLM solution is then required to manage the product
development, R&D costs and introduction of the drug within a
given time frame.
“With PLM, companies can ensure quality by design. They
can bring in the required quality levels at the design stage
itself. They can ensure quality consistency of the product at the
mass production level,” says Kumar.