What Is RPM?

What is RPM?
Rules-Driven Product Management (RPM) refers to a systematic way of capturing and utilizing the rules of how products are designed, manufactured, or sold.  RPM systems can help to ensure effeciency, consistency, and quality in the sales, quoting, and design processes. 

According to a CIMDATA Report, RPM has the following characteristics:

• Rules are managed in defined public contexts (i.e., they are available to all designers); they are also versioned and secured

• They can be used within the user’s CAD and PDM solutions

• They capture design rules both automatically and by user definition

• They allow rules to be customized and adapted

• They provide a user interface that integrates systems, rules, models, and data that are relevant to accomplishing a specific task at a specific time

RPM should be an important part of your overall Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) strategy if your business involves Engineer-To-Order (ETO) or Configure-To-Order (CTO) solutions.

What is a Rule?
A 'Rule', as used by RPM systems, is any thought that can be quantified.  If you can express it so that another human can get the same results you do, then it is a 'rule'.  Rules can be used to tie related aspects of a design together, or to constrain aspects of a design.

From 'What' to 'How' and 'Why'
CAD systems are a wonderful tool for capturing the answers to the 'What..' questions... such as 'What are the dimensions of this part?' or 'What should the part look like?'. 

RPM systems capture and utilize other information (called 'Rules'), that is critical to the sales, design, and manufacturing processes.  This information involves questions such as 'What is the best material to use to manufacture this part?', or 'What should the distance between these two holes be, based on the thickness of the material?'.  In many organizations, the answers to these questions are only kept in the heads of the product experts who design and sell the products.  This makes it difficult for companies to scale in terms of product sales or manufacturing, because there is a more significant amount of time involved in training and knowledge transfer. 

How does this help the sales process?
Because of these limitations in personal product knowledge, it can take a long time to develop quotes and proposals.  During this long development time, it is easy for a competitor to win business, simply because they could respond more quickly with a solution. 

cSHARE helps companies use RPM to reduce lead times, create more accurate quotes and proposals, and integrate the sales process to the engineering and manufacturing processes.

How does this help the product creation and manufacturing processes?
RPM can also bring down costs by reducing the skill level needed to assemble the documentation and materials needed to manufacture a product.  By including automation in the creation of these documents, including drawings,  EBOMs, MBOMs, routings, tooling, fixtures, etc., companies can get products built faster and with less expense.  We also help companies build the 'rules' of manufacturability into engineering, saving time and effort. 

cSHARE helps companies reduce design time and effort by automating decisions in the engineering process.  This means they can be more profitable and competitive.

How does this help companies innovate?
By allowing engineers to focus on designing new products or improving product design, they spend less time configuring existing designs.  This also helps companies become more profitable and competitive.  This opens up new opportunities for sales and revenue!