Claudia Pinna

Impact of PLM System in the New Food Development Process Performances: An Empirical Research

Over the last few years, the food industry has become increasingly more relevant since it represents excellence not only at the European level, but also for the worldwide economy. Starting with this consideration, the main objective of this paper is to provide some elements that could support food companies to be successful in the market. In 2016, during the last PLM conference, the first results of a wider research were presented with the aim to understand how the PLM solution has been adopted into the food industry, and its limits and challenges of the deployment in this sector. This paper presents how the study has evolved through this year. Starting from this point, the impacts and effects from the use of the PLM solution on the New Food Development (NFD) process performances have been described. To identify these effects, a questionnaire was developed and used as a framework to support the data gathering process; each section of the questionnaire is described in the paper. Furthermore, the results of a preliminary empirical research based on a case study are shown. The results of this work will help both food companies and PLM vendors. Indeed, it will support PLM vendors to understand the food industry vision about their NFD process and performances. On the other hand, food companies will be able to better understand their NFD process, their NFD process performances and how they can use the PLM solution to affect their performances.

Effect of product lifecycle management on new product development performances: Evidence from the food industry

Abstract Food industry is becoming more and more crucial for all kind of economies worldwide. Though, despite the higher attention this sector is gaining, there is still uncertainty on how to properly manage food New Product Development (NPD) process. In particular, it is not clear whether IT solutions and methods successfully applicable to traditional manufacturing industries – in particular Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution- would have the same positive impact in the food industry. In this context, the present study starts from the belief that even in the food industry the NPD process can benefit from the implementation of a PLM solution. We introduce and test three propositions: (i) the implementation of a PLM solution is positively related to firm’s process management capability, thus improves NPD performances; (2) the implementation of a PLM solution is positively related to firm’s coordination capability, thus improves NPD performances; and (3) the usefulness of PLM functionalities differs for each NPD stage. The study is based on a multiple case study approach, with data gathered from several multinational food companies. Our results confirm the propositions were correct and specifically the implementation of PLM solutions in food companies positively affect process management and coordination capabilities, resulting in the improvement of overall NPD performance. Moreover, this paper discusses which food NPD stages are affected by PLM solutions and how.

Analysing Product Development Process and PLM Features in the Food and Fashion Industries

The food and fashion industries are well-known as areas of excellence representing Italy globally. Their products include innovative features, have short lifecycles and a high level of customisation. Both the pipelines have to respond quickly to unpredictable demand in order to minimize stock-outs, forced markdowns, obsolete inventory and they focus their Supply Chain (SC) strategies on quality and time-to-market. Although they are characterized by many different aspects, both leverage on the same point of strength: their internal Product Development (PD) process. The opposite occurs in the automotive industry, with its standard and functional products and its efficient pipeline centred on cost reduction. Starting from previous works presented during the last PLM conference (PLM16), the research aims at investigating similarities and differences between these sectors, focusing on their PD process and their main critical success factors. Moreover, the authors analyse how Food and Fashion companies are managing the entire set of information throughout PD and the strategic role of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). In order to reach these goals, a multiple case study analysis has been performed, involving companies belonging to the Food and Fashion industries. The results will be relevant both for academics and practitioners. Indeed, there is a literature gap about this topic, because of the lack of researches concerning Food and Fashion PD. From the practitioners point of view, the results of this work will help Food and Fashion companies to support their business analysing the PD process and to better understand how the use of the PLM system could improve it.

When Product Development Meets Luxury: A Case Study Analysis in Fashion, Food and Furniture Companies

The luxury market segment includes different industries in its aura of high quality and price. The Italian excellence is ascribable to the three F (food, fashion and furniture), that have in common the attention they are paying to the Product Development process. The objective of the present study is to explore product development and the need for ICTs in fashion, furniture and food companies belonging to the luxury market segment. Strategies, activities, issues in process management and the most used ICTs are analysed. Comparing these sectors, the authors have been able to identify commonalities and differences. With the aim to investigate also improvement areas, several best practices and cross fertilization are discussed.

Building a smart maintenance architecture using smart devices: A web 2.0 based approach

In industrial environment to optimize and to improve maintenance operations could be one of main goals to achieve for enhancing revenues for machinery manufacturers providing after-sales services to their customers. Especially remote maintenance and diagnosis are aspects investigated in literature and in real environments in the last years. In fact, remote access and role-specific data distribution can become the next level upgrade of maintenance, diagnostic and flow control management using smart sensors, actuators and smart consumer devices (smartphone, tablet, etc.). In this paper, a real case study has been proposed: a new web-services based server application in order to have remote access to the data streams and to analyze them in an Italian machinery company manufacturer has been provided. This solution permits to have the machine status available on a web page, very strict time responses, a better user profiling and innovative control system based on line smart devices monitoring machine data and sending notification sounds when needed. The result is a platform connecting, by using the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm, industrial machineries with a smart device android app and with a web application build with web 2.0 based technologies.