Background
Marco has 15 years in IT consulting, and more than 10 of those years have gone into PLM and digital transformation. He uses both sides of that experience in his work. IT consulting deals with systems and integrations that have to hold together across a whole enterprise. PLM adds the formulas and specifications a manufacturer needs to get a product to shelf legally and on time. His qualifications come from work on live projects, and the sections below describe that work.
Career
Marco came up through the technical side of PLM. He worked first on PLM data models and enterprise architecture, and later led implementations. He then co-founded C+P Consulting with Lucio Pieroni. They started the firm because they had seen PLM and innovation programmes fail in the gap between the people who design the business process and the people who build the system. Marco covers the platform and architecture side of that partnership. In practice, the gap opens when a process workshop produces requirements the data model can't hold, or when a configured system forces workarounds that nobody planned for.
PLM implementations
Marco has worked on 19 or more PLM and project management system (PMS) implementations, which the firm describes as close to two dozen. A PLM implementation starts with platform selection and ends at go-live. After that comes the slower work of getting teams to use the system every day. PMS projects follow a similar path on the innovation side, where the system tracks projects and stage gates instead of product records. The advice in his articles comes from programmes he has worked on himself.
Accounts
Marco's past accounts include Generali and Enel. He has also worked with Döhler and Nestlé. His past accounts also include Mondelēz and Ferrero. He has worked with Perfetti Van Melle as well. All of them are large organisations. At that size, a PLM project involves more than one business unit, along with legacy systems whose data has to move. These names show the kind of environment behind his writing. Project results belong to the clients and aren't covered on this page.
Sectors
Most of Marco's sector experience is in consumer goods manufacturing. He has also worked in two service industries, with insurance at Generali and energy at Enel. Within consumer goods, he has worked on ingredients at Döhler and food at Nestlé. His confectionery and snacks work covers Mondelēz and Ferrero. He has also worked with Perfetti Van Melle in this sector. These are process manufacturers, and their products start as formulas. When one ingredient changes, the specifications and labels built on it have to change too. His articles cover how process manufacturers manage these changes.
Areas of expertise
Marco's expertise is on the system side of PLM, and it falls into four areas.
PLM data models
He works on PLM processes and data models, which define how a product connects to its formula and specification inside the system. If the model is wrong, the problems turn up later as manual workarounds and duplicate records.
Implementation leadership
He has led implementation teams through the build, a role the firm calls DevEx implementation leadership. He is the person who turns agreed requirements into a working configuration.
Enterprise architecture
His architecture and migration work decides where PLM sits next to enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other systems. It also covers how data moves out of older tools without losing its history.
Standard-first configuration
Marco configures a platform's standard functions before building custom ones. He tests that configuration through conference-room pilots early in a project. In a pilot, real users work in the configured system with real data. That shows the team where the standard set-up falls short while changes are still cheap.