Market Overview

The PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) market size in Japan, based on the shipment values at system/solution manufacturers, has increased by 5.2% from the previous year to 294,059 million yen in 2022. In 2020, because of fallen capital investment at manufacturing due to stagnant economic activities affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the domestic PLM market had declined by 3.3% on a YoY basis. Later, the large-scale easy monetary policy helped the economy to upturn, which encouraged the recovery of capital investment at companies. This led to an uptick of the market by 4.1% on YoY in 2021, and similar recovery has been observed also in 2022.
With surging demand for digital transformation, Japan has seen some progress in it in manufacturing, triggered by the corona crisis, as can see from spreading design reviewing system in the telework environment and well-accepted cloud, as well as proactive efforts to overcome the difficulty by means of IT. All of these have contributed to the PLM market recovery.

Noteworthy Topics

What Comes Next After PLM?

As data volume has become huge in manufacturing, increased efficiency as well as product management will be significant in software development. In addition, when over-the-air (OTA) update for software becomes general, an appropriate management tool is required. To manage all of these by current PLM may be difficult, so that something that comes next after PLM is expected.

When model-based design (MBD) or model-based systems engineering (MBSE) become the mainstream, tools like a set of 1DCAE, 3DCAD, and a simulator will be needed to verify the created software in the digital (cyber) space whether it properly controls machines as the designer intended. When they are added with the data from actual machines, and that from physical (actual) space, they become the digital-twin-based high-precision tools.
Hereafter, PLM is projected to migrate rapidly to new platforms that incorporate AI, big-data analytics, simulation, and cloud computing.

Future Outlook

The domestic PLM market size, based on the shipment values at system/solution manufacturers, is expected to grow by 3.7% from the previous year to 304,800 million yen in 2023.
In association with the global PLM market being on the road to recover, the PLM market in Japan is expected to increase furthermore. Fueled by weakened yen, exporting businesses such as those of automobiles and electrical machinery that are major PLM users have shown great recovery to achieve good business performance. This has favorably affected the PLM market and is likely to continue for the time being. As shift to SaaS is about to be started, PLM probably faces great changes, with ChatGPT and generative AI being applied. By implementing these new technologies, the domestic PLM market is projected to expand furthermore, with the market size forecast in 2026 to reach 347,600 million yen.

Research Outline