case study

Governance Model Established for PLM Across Five Autonomous Regional Entities

The business needed standardization of business decisions, on which practices to retain, adapt, or retire across regions with different priorities, ownership structures, and operational requirements.

Challenge

  • A manufacturing organization implemented PLM across five regional entities, each with its own product development practices, naming conventions, and release logic built up over years of local autonomy

  • The resulting variation made cross-regional alignment difficult and risked embedding inconsistent business practices, creating five different versions of the same platform rather than a single operating model

Approach

  • A governance model, formal mechanism for resolving regional process differences and agreeing a common process baseline and prioritize change through a shared decision-making framework

  • A prioritization framework, enabling business owners across all regions to sequence harmonization activities based on business value, strategic relevance, and operational impact than technical convenience

Value Added

  • The governance model provided a formal mechanism for resolving regional process differences, enabling consistent standardized decisions across all five entities

  • Measurements like KPI tracking became part of the operating model, with efficiency gains measured continuously against program investment. Improvement initiatives prioritized through the same governance model