Is Your Company Ready for MPM? (PLM Readiness)
Digital Transformation
Eric Horn
Managing Partner
Is your company ready for MPM?
It's common to want manufacturing process management (MPM) — managing how a product is actually built, not just designed. MPM is a great capability to grow into. But the honest first question isn't "how do we implement it?" — it's "is the foundation ready to hold it?" Most of the time, the answer is "not yet," and that's not a no. It's a sequencing problem.
Key Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
What MPM is | Managing the manufacturing process, not just the design |
The prerequisite | Well-managed engineering data underneath |
Common finding | Teams want MPM before the foundation is ready |
The fix | Phase it — mature the base, then layer MPM in |
Mindset | "Not yet" is a plan, not a rejection |
Related | PLM maturity roadmap, MPMLink, change management |
The readiness question
When a team says "we want to implement MPM," the right move is to look at the current environment first. Very often the engineering data isn't being managed well enough yet to support it. You can't reliably automate a manufacturing process that's built on a shaky data foundation — you'll just automate the mess faster.
Signals you may not be ready
Engineering data lives in spreadsheets and tribal knowledge more than a controlled system.
Part numbering and BOM structure are inconsistent or manually maintained.
There's no real change-control process, so "current" is whatever's on someone's desktop.
Manufacturing routinely cleans up or reinterprets what engineering sends down.
None of these mean you can't pursue MPM. They mean the base needs to come up to a maturity level that can support it first.
How to phase it
You don't tell all of engineering to fix its process before anyone can start. You find the smallest valuable piece you can mature now, prove it, and grow from there. The guiding question is always: how much change can the organization absorb at once? Build a plan that starts reasonably and matures toward where you actually need to go. (This is exactly what a PLM maturity roadmap is for.)
How Element helps
Element assesses readiness honestly, sequences the work so each phase is achievable, and matures the foundation — data, part numbering, change control — so MPM lands on something solid instead of accelerating existing problems. See the PLM maturity roadmap and what is MPMLink.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if we're ready for MPM?Look at the foundation: is engineering data managed in a controlled system, with consistent part numbering, BOM structure, and real change control? If not, you likely need to mature the base before layering MPM on top.
What is manufacturing process management (MPM)?The discipline of managing how a product is manufactured — the processes, routings, and resources — connected to the engineering definition, rather than managing the design alone.
What if we're not ready for MPM yet?"Not yet" isn't "no." Phase it: mature the smallest valuable piece of the foundation first, prove the value, then grow — sizing each step to how much change the organization can absorb.
Why not just implement MPM now?Because automating a process built on poorly managed data accelerates the problems instead of solving them. Getting the foundation to the right maturity first is what makes MPM stick.
See Also
Organizational Change Management for PLM
About the author
Eric Horn
Eric Horn is Managing Partner at Element Consulting and a PTC Certified Windchill Implementation Practitioner with 20+ years in PLM across aerospace, industrial, and medical.
