TABLE OF CONTENTS
Excel vs. PLM Software: Which is Better?
If you walk into almost any manufacturing company, you’ll find Excel somewhere in the product development process.
Maybe it’s managing a bill of materials (BOM). Maybe it’s tracking approved vendors. Maybe it’s being used to coordinate engineering changes or manufacturing releases. In many cases, it’s all of the above.
There’s a reason for this. Excel is one of the most flexible tools ever created (released 1985). Everyone from engineers to accounting know how to use it. It requires almost no setup. It can be customized for nearly any workflow. It’s low-cost. And in the early days of a company, that’s often exactly what a team needs.
But as engineering teams grow, is Excel enough to manage the product lifecycle? What features does a dedicated PLM tool provide that could help teams develop faster?
Where Excel Starts to Break Down
Most engineering teams don’t wake up one morning and decide they’ve outgrown spreadsheets. Instead, the limitations appear gradually:
- A supplier is working from an outdated version of a BOM.
- An engineer updates a spreadsheet but forgets to notify manufacturing.
- A part revision changes, but sourcing isn’t aware.
- Two versions of the same file begin circulating internally.
- A quality issue arises and nobody can quickly determine when a change was made, who approved it, or which assemblies were affected.
None of these problems are caused by Excel itself. They happen because spreadsheets were never designed to be a system of record (aka a digital thread) for complex product development.
As products become more sophisticated, the cost of manual coordination grows. Teams spend less time building products and more time verifying information, tracking changes, and reconciling conflicting versions of data.
The Shift from Documents to Systems
This is typically the point where companies begin evaluating Product Lifecycle Management software as they look to move from a collection of disconnected documents to a connected system.
A dedicated PLM platform centralizes product information, revisions, approvals, sourcing data, and engineering changes in a way that spreadsheets cannot:
- Instead of asking which spreadsheet contains the latest information, teams know exactly where to look.
- Instead of manually coordinating engineering changes across departments, workflows can be automated.
- Instead of relying on tribal knowledge, product history becomes traceable and accessible.
Better organization is just the tip of the productivity iceberg. The real value comes from faster iterations, fewer errors, and lower production costs.
Why Engineering Teams Choose Duro PLM
Manufacturers that scale most effectively are rarely the ones with the most spreadsheets. They’re the ones with the fewest questions about which information is correct. Duro was built around this reality.
Rather than treating product data as a collection of files, Duro provides a centralized system for managing the entire lifecycle of a product; from design and sourcing through manufacturing and change management.
Duro’s goal is to eliminate the manual coordination work that slows teams down as they scale. Because when product complexity increases, spreadsheets become unwieldy and harder to maintain.
A dedicated PLM software system provides the structure needed to keep teams aligned without sacrificing speed.
