What Is Product Lifecycle Management?

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the strategy and process of managing a product and its data from ideation to end-of-life in an effort to make informed business decisions based on design reviews, engineering changes, and other related processes. This includes the tracking, control, and status of product data from design to final manufacture, including variations of the design as it operates.

The History of PLM

The basis for modern PLM dates back to the early 1980s. Product development tools such as computer-aided design (CAD) software set the foundation for a software-driven approach to product management. This early product lifecycle management software was document-centric and primarily based on CAD.

In the 1990s, PLM software providers began to deploy what we consider essential features today: connectors with other software, more robust security, and collaboration tools. While this marked an evolution in PLM, many companies found these solutions to be cost-prohibitive and highly complex.

PLM platforms evolved again in the 2000s, emphasizing better process management and improved integrations. However, this iteration of a PLM platform often required significant customization to align with an organization’s process needs.

Today, PLM solutions are often delivered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), offloading the infrastructure and many security responsibilities to a SaaS provider. SaaS deployments provide improved security, scalability, and access to global PLM solutions, quickly meeting changing business landscapes.

This setup makes it easier for organizations to scale up or down based on business growth. It also enables better collaboration by granting remote system access to authorized personnel, including internal and external stakeholders. SaaS providers can also easily roll out regular updates and features, enabling them to continually improve and evolve their products.

Many of today’s product lifecycle management software offerings facilitate a digital thread — a foundational paradigm that streamlines collaboration, data flow, and decision-making across the product lifecycle. These modern, flexible PLM solutions aim to consolidate product data management, product data visualization, document management, workflow management, and project management into one platform.

The Benefits of PLM

Product lifecycle management connects all data related to a product’s concept, development, design, engineering, and manufacturing with centralized tooling and processes. This level of connectivity provides several benefits to organizations, including the following:

• Better collaboration between stakeholders such as product designers, engineers, manufacturers, suppliers, and customers
• Real-time, accurate data is provided to the proper personnel so they can make precise decisions, save costs, and improve quality
• Easier compliance, quality tracking, and management
• Streamlined processes that eliminate unnecessary steps by connecting the entire process from ideation to end-of-life

The Stages of Product Lifecycle Management

Product lifecycle management involves every stage of a product’s development, manufacturing, and disposal. It facilitates an iterative, agile approach by providing valuable, real-time data to the right stakeholders.

PLM covers key activities in each of the following stages:

Product Introduction

This stage focuses on product ideation and development. It involves the planning, designing, and initial manufacturing of the product.

Businesses may find this stage challenging because they must spend on product overhead without any income to alleviate expenses. Some companies can also experience mounting costs as they iterate and experiment with potential designs.

A digital thread approach to PLM solves cost challenges by consolidating all product data into a single platform. This way, teams can closely monitor their budget and ensure that efforts are not duplicated by accident — preventing unnecessary costs.

A digital thread can provide the following data in this early stage:

• Market research
• Bills of materials (BOMs)
• CAD models
• Manufacturing process planning, such as work instructions, routing, and process flows
• Product requirements, traceability, and impact analysis

Product Manufacturing

This middle stage encompasses the production of the product. At this point, customers are purchasing and using the product. Through this stage, the organization takes the opportunity to identify areas for improvement — both in the product’s manufacturing process and the product itself.

However, many organizations face a disconnect in understanding how a product’s manufacturing process and customer usage relate to each other. Customer reviews and reports might suggest changes to the product design, but these areas for improvement might get lost in translation and never make it back to the manufacturer.

To remove the siloes in this process, a digital thread makes critical product usage data available to all involved stakeholders. With all this data in one place, it’s far easier for the right personnel to connect the dots between customer usage and the manufacturing process.

A digital thread can help by centralizing the following data into a single platform:

• Change requests, change orders, and engineering change notices
• Product variants, options, and configurations
• Documentation of quality control and assurance processes, such as inspection planning, compliance management, and corrective and preventive actions

Product Deployment and Operation

This stage captures the final configuration of each product manufactured – the digital twin configuration – which can then be used to explore all related digital thread data unique to that individual product. This product is then shipped to a customer, where they can then manage its unique configuration as it changes over time, as it is maintained or upgraded. All history for each unique product continues to be tracked. This provided closed-loop feedback to the manufacturer of the product to help with support issues and understand how it is used to influence new features and capabilities for future generations of the product.

What Is PLM Software?

Product lifecycle management software is a platform that provides traceability across all stages of product development, fostering connectivity between teams and removing siloes in the process. Here is how PLM software plays a part in facilitating each stage of creating and distributing a product:

Concept and Design

PLM software aims to provide a complete picture of the product’s design, including market research and assessments, product strategy and vision, requirements definition, and CAD models of prototypes.

Development

PLM software compiles logistical information about the product’s development, such as bills of materials, engineering changes in configuration, parts and specifications, in a single place. It enables organizations to budget time and costs accurately as they plan out prototypes and begin to source suppliers.

Production and Launch

PLM software supports product production and launch by maintaining all manufacturing-related data, such as inventory, manufacturing change management processes, digital twin configurations, and process flows. It simplifies the documentation process and enables collaboration between dispersed stakeholders such as design offices, manufacturing plants, and supply chain partners, helping organizations save time and costs during this stage.

Service and Support

After product release, the organization must work to improve it based on customer usage. PLM software supports this stage by offering detailed information about the most current version of the product and consolidating quality issues, customer feedback and change management alongside this data. This data centralization makes it easier for businesses to iterate and improve their next generation products as well as support existing products.

Discover how Aras Innovator provides a flexible, customizable platform for organizations to facilitate a proper, end-to-end digital thread and meet their unique business needs.