Upchain PLM Pricing Plans: How Much Does this PLM Cost?

There had been several product flops throughout history. Not to be seen as product brainstorming or engineering design faults, they could have been prevented by having a properly executed product lifecycle management or PLM. 

Take, for example, what happened with Samsung Galaxy Note 7 a few years back. Faulty device batteries that overheat and catch fire was said to be caused by different issues with different suppliers. In Samsung’s goal to lead in design innovation, quality and even safety of users were sacrificed. Again, all these could have been prevented by a successfully executed PLM.

One of the examples of a product lifecycle management software is Upchain PLM. What’s good about Upchain PLM is that you can mix license types based on job roles within the same team. In this article, we identify which features can you get in each license type to match it with a specific job role, giving information and changing access to whoever needs it. 

When you think about PLM in the past, and still currently how we put PLM in the discussion today, much of the focus is on engineering in the heavy industry. But just like anything that can be adapted to digital, PLM technology is also seen competing in the current global marketplace. Businesses are adapting to cloud PLM and designing a better marketing strategy with digital transformation.

From the marketing perspective, more and more companies are adapting their PLM to cloud eliminating the cost and making the process faster through top collaboration tools. The PLM industry is projected to US$60 billion by 2023 and is part of the bigger universe where companies are adapting to new technologies for efficiency. 

It is worth looking inside collaboration within teams without PLM that runs in the cloud. In such cases, product managers struggle the most. Having not so clear communication with Engineering, Supply Chain, Procurement, and other teams, the product manager will have to do all the hard work from setting vision and strategy, utilizing different product information management software and tools, making sure that the timeline is followed, etc. Consistent prioritization is key for the product manager to set the direction, a role impossible to fulfill without cloud PLM.

There are 4 stages of a product life cycle. From introduction, growth, maturity, to decline. However, before the introduction to the market, there is the development stage. The development stage usually takes months, or even years to complete. Thus, the importance of Cloud PLM can be perceived here early on.

Overview of Upchain PLM

Upchain PLM provides a central repository of information that members can access throughout the entire life cycle of a product starting from inception to engineering design and manufacture until the service and disposal of manufactured products.

Before any disposal of products happens, and for the whole process to run well, there needs to be an alignment with another business strategy–that is supply chain management. The supply chain management (SCM) system is in charge of sourcing, logistics, storage, and transportation while making sure that they execute in the most economical way possible. Upchain PLM helps you align your PLM with the right SCM.

Another business strategy you can integrate with PLM, and most importantly with SCM, is global sourcing. Some raw materials are of higher quality and even cheaper in some parts of the world. For this reason, businesses can take that into a cost advantage. Using the PLM system, you can have these strategies work together to ramp up revenue and profit margins while also deliver high-quality products for the company.

With Upchain PLM that works both in Saas, Web, and Cloud, everyone can share the same up-to-date product definition, and be on the same page for changes and implementation. Upchain PLM makes sure that workflow is streamlined. A sped-up product development process means increased profitability, and businesses can compete better against larger competitors.

Upchain PLM’s Free Plan and Pricing Packages

Upchain’s PLM is the answer to any product-related business, giving streamlined access and features unique to each role in any stage of the product life cycle. You can mix and match each plan according to roles. 

Upchain PLM offers three paid plans—Participant Plan, Team Plan, and Professional Plan. There is also a quote-based plan for Enterprise.

1. Free Plan For Suppliers and Vendors

Suppliers and vendors, while they don’t have access to any stage in the product life cycle, need to have early visibility on new design updates. 

What’s included in the Free Plan?

• Problem Reports
• Attach Quotes
• Assembly Visibility

With the Supply Chain team and manufacturers involved in the early phases, they can perform cost, availability, delivery, and even the viability of the project. However, you can only avail of the Free Plan after getting five licenses.

Upchain PLM dashboard rendition by the vendor.

2. Participant Plan For Manufacturing Planning Teams

The Upchain PLM cost for Participant Plan is $20 per member per month. With this plan, users can view CAD files, and get notifications. Also, they can take part in workflows in real-time.

What’s included in the Participant Plan?

• Custom BOM view of CAD / non-CAD attributes
• View CAD files in a functional 3D viewer
• Export BOM data to Excel
• View all file types
• View project dashboards, calendar, tasks, and stage gates

The manufacturing planning team can use 3D CAD viewer (just to be sure, check if your CAD software files work well with this PLM software) and BOM data for working with Engineers in reviewing CAD files, and monitoring ECRs. Upchain PLM features such as BOM management, inventory management of raw materials, parts, and components that make up the actual products. 

3. Team Plan for Project Managers

The Upchain PLM cost for the Team Plan is USD$50 per user per month. This plan is best for Project Managers to lead implementation working with suppliers and vendors, manufacturing planning, finance organization, and Engineering. This plan also allows executing IT budgets and deploying analytics reports through documents and files you can extract from the system cloud. 

What’s included in the Team Plan?

• Custom BOM view of CAD / non-CAD attributes
• All Participant features
• Export BOM to Excel
• Export supporting documents
• Markup of a 3D Model, GD&T, and comparison overlays
• MS Office Suite plugins
• Document revision/version control and history
• Import and link BOM and CAD to documents

Quickly access your data and records via the cloud. You can log into Upchain PLM anywhere you’re internet-connected.

4. Professional Plan for Owners and Engineers

The Upchain PLM cost for Professional Plan is USD$150 per user per month. This gives users an all-access with all the features available to use. They design it for the project owners and engineers in mind. Project owners and engineers can create workflows and make changes in any development and execution stage, as just one example. 

What’s included in the Professional Plan?

• Custom BOM view of CAD / non-CAD attributes
• All Team features
• Edit CAD files
• Manage and edit supporting CAD design documents
• Import and edit BOM from XML/XLS
• Workflow setup, editing and initiation for issues, RFQs, ECRs and ECNs
• Create new projects, templates, workflows and custom part numbering schemes

Product Engineers will find Upchain PLM most useful. For example, where product design can change, product engineers can see updates immediately through Overlay features. Also, they can look through BOM data for parts that they need. The 3D CAD viewers show the progress to teams involved.

You can integrate Upchain PLM within an already popular program such as G-Suite, Microsoft Office Plugins, and Oracle. Upchain PLM has a built-in 2D/3D CAD viewer and markup tools, which eliminate the need for expensive CAD licenses, a common bottleneck for existing and PLM competitor software. 

5. Enterprise Plan for Larger Teams

If you would like to know how much does Upchain PLM cost for the Enterprise Plan, you will need to arrange a call with the sales team. Also, this Upchain PLM pricing plan allows you to request for additional integration features that you need specifically for your business. You may want to consider the Pilot Program first which requires 5 users in a single division, for example. If you see that Upchain PLM fits the business perfectly, that’s the best time to expand to other divisions.

Which Upchain PLM Plan Suits You Best?

Finally, the question is not whether to avail of such a plan. Upchain PLM pricing plans offer a systematic approach to managing a product’s life cycle from inception to disposal. Passing up on such technology takes a heavy toll on the business and its members.

When choosing which plan to employ for your team, it’s important to identify each member’s job roles to match them with the correct plan. Even after this plan selection process, the Upchain PLM platform has a granular permission control which means you have full control by further limiting the role of each member.

By Allan Jay

Allan Jay is FinancesOnline’s resident B2B expert with over a decade of experience in the SaaS space. He has worked with vendors primarily as a consultant in the UX analysis and design stages, lending to his reviews a strong user-centric angle. A management professional by training, he adds the business perspective to software development. He likes validating a product against workflows and business goals, two metrics, he believes, by which software is ultimately measured.