Product Lifecycle Management, PLM, and its components can be confusing in a software industry of various acronyms and definitions. Simply stated PLM is the process of managing your company’s products through their lifecycle from ideation, design, development, production, support and end of life.
The complexity in bringing products to market has evolved over time, as has the product itself. Few products produced and manufactured today are comprised of a few mechanical parts. Most products are comprised of mechanical, electrical and software components dictated by regulatory compliance and sold into a global marketplace requiring multiple product configurations and supporting documentation.
The ability to define the underlying processes throughout your product’s lifecycle and leverage that critical information across the enterprise to improve collaboration, product quality and time to market is what sets businesses apart. By leveraging most, if not all, of the PLM components outlined here companies are making great strides in not only controlling their intellectual property but using it to make smarter, faster business decisions to lower product development costs, improve product quality and gain market share.
