In industry, product lifecycle management (PLM) refers to the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product – from idea to development, design, manufacturing, maintenance and disposal. PLM integrates people, data, processes and business systems and provides companies and their extended enterprises with a centralized information base for products. The concept is based on coordinated methods, processes and organizational structures and usually uses IT systems to record and manage the data.
Product Lifecycle Management
Development of New Products
for Global Markets
for Global Markets
What does Product Lifecycle Management Mean for the Industry?
PLM systems help organizations deal with the increasing complexity and technical challenges of developing new products for global markets. Product lifecycle management describes the technical aspect of a product, while product-related lifecycle management covers the commercial management of a product's life in terms of costs and sales activities.
PLM is considered one of the four cornerstones of a manufacturing company's information technology structure, alongside CRM (Customer Relationship Management), SCM (Supply Chain Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). At the same time, PLM is also the necessary foundation for Digital Mock-Up (DMU).
Product lifecycle management comprises five main areas:
- Systems Engineering (SE): Focuses on the fulfillment of all requirements, mainly customer needs, and the coordination of the system design process by involving all relevant disciplines.
- Product and Portfolio Management (PPM): managing resource allocation, tracking progress and planning new product development projects.
- Product design (CAx): Process of creating a new product that is sold by a company to its customers.
- Manufacturing Process Management (MPM): Collection of technologies and methods for defining manufacturing processes.
- Product Data Management (PDM): Recording and maintaining information about products and services during their development and useful life.
Technologies and Phases of the Product Life Cycle
Many software solutions have been developed to organize and integrate the different phases of the product lifecycle. PLM should not be viewed as a single software product, but as a collection of tools and working methods that are integrated together to either address individual phases of the lifecycle, combine different tasks or manage the entire process.
The phases of the product lifecycle in PLM include:
- Conception
- Specification
- Concept design
- Design
- Detailed design
- Validation and analysis (simulation)
- Tool design
- Realization
- Production planning
- Manufacture
- Assembly
- Testing (quality control)
- Service
- Sale and delivery
- Utilization
- Maintenance and support
- Waste disposal
However, the reality is more complex as activities and departments cannot work in isolation and design is an iterative process that often needs to be changed due to production constraints or conflicting requirements.
Potential Benefits of PLM
The documented benefits of product lifecycle management include:
- Reduced time to market
- Increased sales at full price
- Improved product quality and reliability
- Reduced prototyping costs
- More accurate and faster quote requests
- Ability to quickly identify potential sales opportunities and revenue contributions
- Savings through the reuse of original data
- Framework for product optimization
- Conservation of resources
- Savings through full integration of technical workflows
- Documentation for compliance with regulations
- Ability to provide contract manufacturers with access to a centralized product database
- Management of seasonal fluctuations
- Improved forecasting to reduce material costs
- Maximize collaboration in the supply chain
The potential benefits are difficult to quantify as they are made up of direct and indirect effects. Nevertheless, relevant studies show a close correlation between PLM maturity and business success.
History of Product Lifecycle Management
The inspiration for product lifecycle management came from the American Motors Corporation (AMC). In 1985, AMC was looking for ways to speed up the product development process to better compete with larger competitors. François Castaing, vice president of product development at AMC, focused the company's research and development efforts on extending the product life cycle of its flagship products, particularly Jeeps. This was necessary because AMC did not have the budgets of General Motors, Ford and foreign competitors.
AMC introduced the compact Jeep Cherokee, which established the modern SUV market, and began development of a new model, the Jeep Grand Cherokee. The first step towards faster product development was the introduction of CAD software, which significantly increased the productivity of the engineers. The second step was a new communication system that resolved conflicts faster and reduced costly design changes as all drawings and documents were stored in a central database. Product data management was so effective that the system was extended throughout the company after Chrysler's acquisition of AMC. As a result, Chrysler was able to become one of the most cost-effective producers in the automotive industry.
Challenges and the Future of PLM
The greatest difficulty lies in integrating the various disciplines within PLM. The constantly growing proportion of software in today's products and the requirement to develop, simulate (digital prototyping), validate and manufacture multidisciplinary systems in their entire function presents almost all industries with the challenge of integrating the management of software controls and embedded software in general alongside the management of mechanical, electronic and electrical components.
A further challenge arises from the extension of digitalization to the entire value chain. The separation into the application areas of PLM (product development through to production release), digital factory (production planning and simulation of production), MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems for controlling and monitoring production systems and machines) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning for controlling production orders and resources), which has been common to date, prevents the efficient use of digitalization in terms of higher productivity. All manufacturers are called upon here to enable further integration by opening up the systems, which have mostly been monolithic to date.
How DMU Enriches Product Lifecycle Management
With the VT-DMU modular software kit, we bring real digital mock-up into the product life cycle. DMU is necessary from the very first 3D model in order to ensure quality, completeness, transparency and freedom from errors. This enables, among other things, the simulation of 3D models and the representation of entire 3D processes in the various PLM stages of a product. Other advantages include
- VT-DMU creates transparency in the 3D data, regardless of the quantity and size
- VT-DMU shows how the 3D data is doing, i.e. what state it is in and how it can be optimized
- With VT-DMU, you can measurably increase the maturity of virtual 3D data and digital product development
- With VT-DMU, you can increase the quality of your digital products faster and in less time
In summary, the functions of VT-DMU such as geometric comparison, collision and distance calculation or automatic image generation make a decisive contribution to reliably safeguarding digital products throughout the entire development process – from the early phase through to system integration
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