What is Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)?

Many people create data and interact with a product throughout its life. Imagine you have an idea for a new car. First you do some market research and analyze costs and revenues. Then, you develop the engineering designs to layout the specifics. Once you have the specific design, you manufacture the car. A year or two later, you have some improvements that you want to add to your car, so you start with the previous engineering drawings and add your improvements and send it again to manufacturing. Twenty years later, your car is outdated, and you decide to discontinue future production.

Process

That example was a simplified version of a product’s life. The products life consists of various stages from idea to engineering & design, manufacturing, maintenance, and retirement. In reality, however, every stage contains many teams that need to create and share data. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the branding given to managing information across these stages. PLM is a solution to teams at each stage having their own data systems and having trouble communicating across said systems.

Now let us break apart each stage of our car example and explain what goes on in each stage.

Idea

The idea stage consists of coming up with the idea for a product. This might include doing market research, analyzing costs, and forecasting revenues. Files you create along the way could include:

• Excel files for analyzing costs
• PowerPoint presentations to persuade stakeholders
• Word file analysis reports

Engineering/Design

Once you decide that you have a good idea for a product, you need to draw out exactly how it will work. In the engineering and design phase you might create:

• Computer-Aided Design drawings
• Bill of Materials lists
• Finite Element Analysis (FEA) files

Manufacturing

After you have drawings that spell out exactly how the product is to be built, it is time to start building. In the manufacturing phase you might create:

• Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) files
• Bill of Materials
• Manufacturing work process reports

After the idea, engineering & design, and manufacturing phases data management is more focused on the longer term.

Maintenance

The maintenance phase might happen a couple years after manufacturing to maintain your product. This phase is less about data creation and more about data finding. If you must do some maintenance on a product you might need to see the drawings of the product. In this case finding the files is important. Some files such as maintenance reports might also be created at this stage.

Retirement

Once you decide to retire the product, you are more focused on securing and maintaining the integrity of the files. In some cases, you might need to go back to a document long into the future. Ensuring that important documents are found and preserved is vital at this stage. In this stage, you might convert documents into a PDF/A version which is the standard for long term archiving.

Symptoms/Problems (before)

What are the symptoms of a company that has poor PLM? A company might be suffering from poor PLM if they experience miscommunication about file versions, inefficiencies finding files, important product data lost over time. The core issue is scattered data.

Miscommunication across product lifecycle stages

Businesses with poor PLM might experience issues of miss communication sharing files, knowing which version is correct, and knowing who is working on what. Image you are an engineer working on electrical drawings for a building. You receive a file from a consultant who is working on the plumbing drawings. You work for two days adding your updates to then realize that you were working on the wrong version. Now you lost two days of potentially billable time. If you bill at $140/hour that is about $140/hour * 16 = $2,240.

Inefficiencies finding product files

You might have trouble finding files across the product lifecycle stages. According to a McKinsey study, professional workers like engineers spend about 20% of their time looking for files. That is about 8 hours a week. If each product lifecycle stage had their own system, sharing files would be inefficient. To share files across stages, you would most likely need to contact someone from another team for access. Files would most likely be shared via email. You could then consider the time it takes to upload the file to an email and the time it took to contact the person to get the file.

Product data lost over time

A company with poor PLM might lose product data over time. This can be especially painful for the maintenance and retirement stages. These stages can be many years apart. In some cases, there are regulations for how long you must store important product files. Long in to the future, you might not even know where to look.

Solutions (after)

PLM tries to solve these core problems and result in a process that is cleaner and more efficient. A company with good PLM has better communication, can quickly find files across product stages, and can find data throughout the life of the product. Less data silos exist, and teams are more connected.

Better Communication

A company with good PLM has better communication across product lifecycle stages. With PLM you would know where to find files because everything would be in one place. You would know which file is the latest version and the status of it (if the file is released, under review, etc.). You would also be able to see who is working on the referenced files that you are working on.

Efficiencies finding files

With good PLM, you can find files faster. With good PLM, you can easily share across product lifecycle stages because you store files on the same system. You know where to find files because you store everything in the same place.

Data found throughout life of product

With good PLM, data stays intact throughout the life of the product. This is also a benefit of storing files in one place. You can find data even in the later stages of the product in maintenance and retirement. You might need it to comply with data storage regulations if you need to store files for long term use. You can feel comfortable knowing data stays intact throughout the life of the product and long into the future.

Managing the Product Lifecycle

PLM is the idea of controlling data across the life of a product. Many companies struggle with poor PLM and scattered data. Implementing more PLM strategies and storing data in one place can help a team be more connected and work more efficiently.

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