Oracle continues to progress on building a deep product lifecycle management suite. Better known for its ERP and database applications, it has not historically been recognized as a leader in PLM functionality. As Oracle progresses further into PLM, its priorities are on its core supply chain base first to meet these needs around global new product launch.

Release 12 of Oracle’s PLM emphasizes three main areas of improvement: 

• Multisite bill-of-materials (BOM) release—The Product Workbench has been expanded to ease the release of unique BOMs to multiple manufacturing sites referencing a common engineering BOM. 
• CAD publishing—Now includes an Import Workbench to ease the publishing of multiple CAD BOMs and documents into a common Oracle repository. The interface allows users to scrub data and map CAD design data to items in Oracle PLM.
• Advanced document management—A dedicated workbench specific to managing documents. Allows revision and version control of complex documents such as training manuals and process instructions.

Oracle PLM R12 provides depth in the process of releasing and aligning product information across multiple phases of new product launch. The multisite BOM release distinguishes Oracle from its more CAD-centric PLM competitors, recognizing the pain felt by global manufacturers to manage factory-specific configurations while maintaining the integrity of engineering’s form-fit-function design intent. This lets Oracle extend its supply chain customers further upstream into the product development and engineering release process.

Meanwhile, the improved CAD integration fills a gap in that area—not with a claim to perform work-in-process CAD data management, but to ease the release of that data to the enterprise. The enhanced document management allows Oracle to better position against the improved capability of others in this arena, particularly PTC’s gains here with its Arbortext acquisition. These new enhancements may not thrill the pure product innovators in an organization, but they should streamline some painful tasks, particularly associated with global manufacturing readiness for new product launch.