Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | A | Automotive Design & Production

What you need to know about PLM: product life cycle management (PLM) isn't just a piece of technology. It's a product, an infrastructure, and, more important, a strategy.

Article Excerpt
A majority of the money for product lifecycle management (PLM) is spent on engineering applications. While that money yields benefits, realize that engineering is only a component of PLM. "If you look at PLM just as an engineering initiative, you're missing the boat," says Ed Miller, president of CIMdata (Ann Arbor, MI; www.cimdata.com). A better approach is to view PLM as an enterprise strategy, much more than a collection of engineering apps. Here are some other things management should know about PLM.

PLM is a project

PLM involves technology, and fairly sophisticated technology at that. But companies can't just drop a PLM system into their operations like they can with product data management (PDM) and expect instant benefits such as innovation, productivity, and product differentiation.

"PLM is bigger than PDM," says Bill Carrelli, vice president of strategic marketing for Siemens PLM Software (Milford, OH; www.siemens.com). PDM is a data repository containing product and process information. PLM is more an information technology (IT) infrastructure for tying product information together and ensuring that information flows from the early part of the product development to the delivery of the product, through to the end of that product's life.

PLM systems cut across organizational boundaries. Ideally, PLM invites communication and collaboration by engaging different parts of the...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!