Corporate
Emerson Addresses Tough Economic Times Ahead
Emerson releases 500 new products every year. That’s 2 a day. Those products create more than 100,000 new parts for their database every year. Those parts need to be accessed by 7,000 engineers all o...
Emerson releases 500 new products every year. That’s 2 a day. Those products create more than 100,000 new parts for their database every year. Those parts need to be accessed by 7,000 engineers all over the world. And despite a tough economy, Dr. Randall Ledford, senior vice president and CTO for Emerson, says they still have to be innovative and “pump out products.”
In the video above, Randall comments on Emerson’s use of PLM to manage business complexity, weather tough economic times and to deploy data management to smaller divisions. (Using what they call TCIB = Teamcenter-in-a-box.)
Randall was pretty frank with the executives at this event.
“The next couple of years are going to be the toughest we’ve ever had…this is a really, really challenging economy.”
While Emerson had 12% growth this past year, if they sold the same amount of products at the same price, their revenue would decline next year just because of currency valuations.
So how does a company that has 52 consecutive years of increased performance prepare for tough economic times? They plan, plan and plan some more. Randall noted an HBR case study that sheds detail on their rigorous planning process, if you’re interested.
Randall said that he understood the Archimedes analogy we’ve made to product and production lifecycle, seeing PLM as that fulcrum and lever to move the world.
“PLM unleashes the value by reducing complexity and improving engineering design processes.”
