Product Lifecycle Management


"Product lifecycle management is an integrated, information-driven approach to all aspects of a product's life - from its design inception through its manufacture, deployment and maintenance, culminating in its removal from service and final disposal."

–University of Michigan, PLM Development Consortium

Product lifecycle management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal. It is one of the four cornerstones of a corporation's information technology structure. All companies need to manage communications and information with their customers (CRM-Customer Relationship Management) and their suppliers (SCM-Supply Chain Management) and the resources within the enterprise (ERP-Enterprise Resource Planning). In addition, manufacturing engineering companies must also develop, describe, manage and communicate information about their products (PLM).

Documented benefits include:

  • Reduced time to market
  • Improved product quality
  • Reduced prototyping costs
  • Savings through the re-use of original data
  • A framework for product optimization
  • Reduced waste
  • Savings through the complete integration of engineering workflows

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is more to do with managing descriptions and properties of a product through its development and useful life, mainly from a business/engineering point of view; whereas Product life cycle management (PLM) is to do with the life of a product in the market with respect to business/commercial costs and sales measures.[

Product lifecycle management (PLM) is the title commonly applied to a set of application software that enables the New Product Development (NPD) business process.

Within PLM there are four primary areas;

1.        Product and Portfolio Management (PPM)

2.        Product Design (CAx)

3.        Manufacturing Planning (MPM)

4.        Product Data Management (PDM)

Note: While application software is not required for PLM processes, the business complexity and rate of change requires organizations execute as rapidly as possible.

Product Data Management is focused on capturing and maintaining information on products and/or services through its development and useful life. Product and Portfolio Management is focused on managing resource allocation, tracking progress vs. plan for projects in the new product development projects that are in process (or in a holding status). Portfolio management is a tool that assists management in tracking progress on new products and making trade-off decisions when allocating scarce resources.