What Is PLM and What Does it Do?

Product lifecycle management (PLM) can be described as the people, processes, and tools used to manage a product and the product record from concept through design, development, and production. Organizations implement product lifecycle management to achieve a number of business goals like faster and lower scrap and rework costs. While many PLM solutions are available in the market today, most organizations are already doing some parts of product lifecycle management without a specialized system.

The basic concepts of PLM include

• Product Data Management
• Engineering Change Management
• Product Structure Management

What PLM Offers?

Product Lifecycle management (PLM) provides data and management capabilities to reduce the non-value-added tasks required of engineers. It also increases engineering productivity, provides insight into engineering efforts, and improves product quality and customer satisfaction. Companies are receiving significant value and return from their PLM investments. Many companies begin implementing PLM by establishing a single source of product data, or product record. Most PLM solutions offer sophisticated interfaces to many design automation and office applications, which reduce the need to capture, store, and validate product data. Product designs are maintained as assemblies and parts in the PLM system, and that arrangement allows engineers easy searching when they are looking, for example, for legacy components, with software providing a critical control and value portion of the product. With PLM, disparate engineering teams work more collaboratively.

Six tips for a smooth and successful PLM implementation

• Establish objectives & goals for your PLM strategy
• Review your processes
• Review your data
• Obtain organizational & executive buy-in
• Work from a project plan & assign a project lead
• Train people on the new processes early