Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) helps some of the world’s largest defense contractors improve their pursuit of government programs and to accelerate successful delivery of program deliverables.

PLM automates design reviews and changes to contract data requirement listing (CDRL) items and helps contractors meet configuration accounting compliance. It also facilitates ‘teaming to win’, supporting online design reviews and collaboration on CDRL deliverables and contracts through a secure, Web environment that is easily deployable and extremely low cost to own.

Automotive and transportation product suppliers must continually maximize intellectual assets, cut costs, and improve productivity. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) helps companies in this industry promote reuse of standard components, parts, and assemblies, and even supporting documentation, to shorten the product design cycle, reduce time-to-market, and significantly cut material and manufacturing costs.

PLM also enables process automation that not only speeds the implementation of changes and approvals to accelerate cost, quality, and manufacturability improvements but also keeps companies in check with ISO standards, such as PPAP and AQP.

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is well represented in the consumer industry with customers that produce everything from soup to soap. Many of these companies measure themselves not so much by final goods cost but more so by total delivered cost (TDC).

PLM helps to reduce TDC. Companies rely on PLM to help cut raw material and purchased part costs by leveraging material/item reuse and thus, improving their buying power. Companies also use PLM to automate best practices/design standards to help them get their products out the door with greater efficiency and into the hands of consumers faster and at lower cost.

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) customers in the utility, oil, and gas market are a diverse group, producing equipment for oil and gas exploration, home heating systems, and fuel pump nozzles. Their product lines are very different but their business drivers are similar — to try to top their next product in terms of innovation at lower cost — while keeping ahead of stringent environmental regulations.

PLM relieves the pressure by helping to automate design standards to ensure compliant products. Its heterogeneous approach to managing product data supports companies with multiple CAD systems or with the exchange of product data with suppliers that may have differing systems.

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions play a critical role in managing the complex data, security and collaboration required for government agencies to effectively manage their global network of contractors, sub-contractors and employees.

PLM provides s a secure, scalable solution for the management of contracts, drawings, processes, procedures, and documentation thereby ensuring the controlled classification, distribution and control required of all Government agencies.

Successful competitors in the high tech and electronics industries are in a fervent race to top the next in terms of product creativity, features and lower cost products. To succeed, they must tap into the ingenuity of their often globally dispersed engineering and manufacturing, as well as exploit existing technologies such as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions.

PLM enables leaders in this field to advance technology and improve business performance. It centralizes global access to information, facilitates collaboration, and automates more coordinated product processes. It also facilitates easier information access, promoting cost effective component, assembly, and information reuse, and speeds the cut in of changes and improvements.

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) customers in this market typically produce complex and often engineered-to-order industrial and capital equipment, equipment for many tasks from automating factories to clearing lumber. Although, these products are often complex, the processes used to create them need not be.

PLM centralizes and provides organization of all forms of product data — from proposals to CAD drawings, BOMs, test data, and even maintenance manuals and service records. It provides easy access to current data, automates product processes, and facilitates online collaboration to improve coordination on designs and changes, speed proposal responses, and tap into the creativity of extended product teams.

Medical equipment and device manufacturers have the compounded task of adhering to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, strict but important to product quality and ultimately, patient safety. The FDA requires accurate, meticulously controlled drawings, documents, and procedures for managing electronic data from pre-market approval to final shipment of products.

Meeting FDA Rule 21 CFR Part 11, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) makes sure that missing or inaccurate data is never a problem and that complete, up-to-date documents can be presented to the FDA at a moment’s notice. It also ensures that production is driven by current information, eliminating non-compliance that can have devastating consequences for a business in this industry.