PLM's a turd. We all know it. It might have been a great idea in theory. But it's yet another big shiny thing that Mattel bought - another one size fits all mega system that requires a ton of manpower and never fires on all cylinders. First system has to be repaired and customized for our use (because I guess the damn thing is either broken or bare bones when you buy it). Then it requires a whole freaking team of people to run the damn thing and create reports. They fired a lot of those people which was stupid. Lastly it has increased a huge amount of work on everyone to input information. Terrible user interface. Is it really better than what we were doing before? I'd like someone to show me why. I hear about people doing everything possible to avoid using it if they can. Just cuz McDonalds is using it to make french fries don't mean it's right for makin' toys. $80 million is a lot of salaries. I'd love to know what the kickback was. And who knows how much more they've spent on the infernal thing since then.
10 replies (most recent on top)
PLM aka People Leaving Mattel :)
Let's not make good product to intrigue kids, let's learn how to enter data efficiently to better cost product
It's too bad people have to spend time innovating ways to work around the limitations of PLM instead of spending that time innovating new toys
Maybe people would time to innovate if they weren't stuck entering data into PLM all day.
Failure should be accepted and PLM needs to go away. Nobody will miss it.
Don't engineer a product, learn how to enter data
Why all the hate for PLM? You don't like the simple 19-step process for entering one piece of information?
What kind of Product Lifecycle Management system do you guys use at Mattel? Oracle? SAP? Custom? Other? That stuff never works and you are not the only one who struggles. It's just too expensive to run and too cumbersome to configure, maintain, feed and run. My wife is with Mattel and I am with Cisco, we had a similar debacle in this area, I know at least 2 more Fortune 500 companies that canned the product. Just my two cents.
Kickbacks, you say? How ever did Goodman pay for his Fisker electric car? Same poor judgement with PLM as Fisker, he's always backing the wrong horse. Which means he has exactly what it takes to be Mattel's new CEO.
PLM has raised product costs by standardizing the worst case scenario for all parts. What this country (or China) needs is a good five-cent rubber band. They used to be one-tenth that.