BLDEA’s VP Dr.

PGH College of Engineering and Technology,

Vijayapur

Dr. G.V.Patil
Department of Mechanical Engineering
INTRODUCTION TO PLM

Product lifecycle management (PLM) refers

to the handling of a good as it moves through the
typical stages of its product life: development
and introduction, growth, maturity/stability, and
decline. This handling involves both the
manufacturing of the good and the marketing of
it. The concept of product life cycle helps
inform business decision-making, from pricing
and promote on to expansion or cost-cutting.

Effective product life cycle management brings

together the many companies, departments, and
employees involved with the product's
production to streamline their activities, with the
ultimate goal of producing a product that
outperforms its competitors, is highly profitable,
and lasts as long at consumer desire and
technology permit. It goes well beyond just
setting up a bill of materials.
 DEFINITION OF PLM

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the business activity of managing, in the

most effective way, a company’s products all the way across their lifecycles; from
the very first idea for a product all the way through until it is retired and disposed of.

PLM is the management system for a company’s products. It doesn’t just manage
one of its products. It manages, in an integrated way, all of its parts and products,
and the product portfolio.

PLM manages the whole range, from individual part through individual product to
the entire portfolio of products. At the highest level, the objective of PLM is to
increase product revenues, reduce product-related costs, maximise the value of the
product portfolio, and maximise the value of current and future products for both
customers and shareholders.
 THE PARADIGM BEFORE PLM

The PLM Paradigm emerged in 2001. The previous paradigm for the management of a
company’s products was Departmental:

• The Marketing Department decided which products were needed by the

market
• The Engineering Department designed them
• The Manufacturing Department produced them
• The After-Sales Department supported them

This paradigm was generally agreed and shared for most of the twentieth century. The
reasoning behind it was that the specialists in a department are the best equipped to carry
out the activities of that function. For example, specialists in the Engineering Department
were believed to be best equipped to carry out Engineering activities.

Over time, though, this reasoning and belief in departmental ability implicitly extended so
that each department didn’t just carry out activities for which it had specialist functional
know-how.
 A HOLISTIC PARADIGM

PLM has a holistic approach to the

management of a product. It’s a business
activity addressing not only products but
also organizational structure, working
methods, processes, people, information
structures and information systems.
Under PLM, all of the components of the
PLM Grid are taken into account when
managing the product.

Under the previous paradigm, there was

a piecemeal approach to managing these
components. They were managed in
different unconnected ways at different
times in the lifecycle with different
approaches by different people. There
was no overview of how they were
managed.
 NEED FOR PLM

 The business environment is rapidly changing and becoming extremely

competitive.

 Organizations can no longer afford to take a lot of time to develop and introduce
their products to the market.

 Also in line with the various business processes, which too are getting more
complex with time, the products are also evolving and getting more advanced.

 This has created a need for the businesses to have a better operational model to
support the product development, precisely because in its absence, it will be
challenging for the businesses to manage all the different aspects of creating a
new product. And in such scenario, product development will inevitably run late
and exceed its budget.

 The need of the hour for the organizations is to make the product development
process more transparent and improve the efficiencies.

 This will lead to more innovations, shorter product development cycles, and
faster time-to-market, among other things. And what helps them in achieving all
this? A PLM system.
 THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF PLM ARE:

1. Management of design and process

documents
2. Product structure (bill of material)
management
3. Central data vault (electronic file repository)
4. Part and document classification and
metadata ("attribute") management
5. Materials content identification for
environmental compliance
6. Product-focused project task assignment
7. Workflow and process management for
approving changes
8. Multi-user secured access, including
"electronic signature“
9. Data export for loading downstream ERP
systems
 Product Data Management(PDM), Implementation
of PDM systems.
A company uses a centralized software system to store all the information related to a
product. This system feeds all the other systems within the company that require
information about that product. This information can include everything from the raw
materials used to construct that product to how it was built. The data can be used across
a variety of business functions, from design to marketing.
PDM was originally used primarily for the computer aided design (CAD) process.
Engineers needed a better way to keep up with paper documentations related to the
development of a product. This centralized system was designed to keep up with all the
data associated with a product. PDM continues to be used very heavily by engineers
today, but also used by many others who build any product through a series of processes
and raw material. Any business user who interacts with a product throughout its
lifecycle benefits from the use of this information collected. Information typically
stored in PDM includes:

1.Technical specifications - measurements and materials.

2.Drawings - electronic or manual visuals of the product.
3.Bill of materials - or BOMs, for raw materials.
4.Engineering documentations- how a product is constructed.
5.Other documents- example, photographed images of final product.
Product Data Management (PDM) systems are
about managing product information,
throughout the entire lifecycle of a product, in
a more efficient, organized way. A PDM
system is used: to store and retrieve product
design data in electronic form (called vaulting);
to keep track of all possible product
configurations (product structure management);
to control the release of engineering
information (workflow management); and to
record a detailed bill of material of every
product shipped; known as configuration
management.

The PDM system helps users such as engineers

and others, to manage both data and the
product development process. The system
keeps track of the masses of data and
information required to design and
manufacture products and then supports and
maintains the data. PDM integrates and
manages processes, applications and
information that define products across
 
Product Data Management (PDM) is the
use of software to manage product data and
process-related information in a single,
central system. This information includes
computer-aided design (CAD) data,
models, parts information, manufacturing
instructions, requirements, notes and
documents. The ideal PDM system is
accessible by multiple applications and
multiple teams across an organization, and
supports business-specific needs. Choosing
the right PDM software can provide a
company in any industry with a solid
foundation that can be easily expanded into
a full PLM platform. At its core, a PDM
system provides solutions for secure data
management, process enablement, and
configuration management.
 SYSTEM DESIGN

A PDM system should be centralized and

contain version control and security, which
keeps the data accurate and adds accountability
to those that manage the data. The PDM should
be part of a larger, more
encompassing, product lifecycle
management system (PLM). A PLM includes
the systems to which the PDM feeds data, such
as an internet repository used for marketing the
product online. A PLM encompasses every
aspect of a product from inception to market
deployment.

The information includes computer-aided design (CAD) data, models, parts

information, manufacturing instructions, requirements, notes and documents. The ideal
PDM system is accessible by multiple applications and multiple teams across an
organization, and supports business-specific needs. Choosing the right PDM software
can provide a company in any industry with a solid foundation that can be easily
expanded into a full PLM platform. At its core, a PDM system provides solutions for
secure data management, process enablement, and configuration management.
 PDM IMPLEMENTATION

PDM implementation project can be performed from a tactical point of view. While
implementing PDM systems in an organization there are five different dimensions
that need to be considered. They are
(1) Focus; (2) Level of change; (3) Width of change; (4) Participative or
Expert driven; and (5) Speed of change.

Different companies will address these issues differently depending on which

context they are in. It is difficult to give a definite answer on exactly what the
correct way of implementing a PDM system is, since the companies operate under
different circumstances.
1 Focus
Different companies have different reasons for introducing PDM systems. They will
focus on different aspects of the PDM support. Full scale implementation of PDM
systems is usually done as a part of a company’s long range plans to utilize modern
information Other companies will turn to PDM systems when they have certain
problems where a subset of the PDM functionality can give great gain to the
company.. PDM systems can also be used to link different functional departments,
and in that sense be an enabling technology for concurrent engineering.
2 Level of change
When introducing PDM, one of the more important tasks is to decide the level
of change that must be made to the rest of the company in order to utilize the
possible advantages of PDM. It is possible to implement a PDM system over
the existing processes in a engineering company. This method is often
assessed as easy, even though it may require extensive modification of the
PDM system to bring into pace with the companies method of working and
existing computer systems. However, this method does not utilize the full
promise of PDM.

3 Width of change
Another area of interest is the implementation of the actual PDM system.
Should it first be introduced in a pilot project, which gives a small with of
change, or is it better to introduce it company wide? Both approaches have
their own advantages and disadvantages. With a pilot project, the PDM system
will be implemented within just one engineering project in the company. In
this project, all participants will work with the PDM system. Some companies
choose to run the pilot with dummy data in a test environment.
4 Participative or expert driven
The PDM implementation project can be participative or expert driven to
different degrees. In a participative project the users have a strong role through
the entire project. Their knowledge will be utilized to secure a properly working
system. The designers tend to use the parts of the policy that they think will help
them in their work. If the company policy is to cumbersome easier ways of
working are often developed ad hoc. For a PDM system to have a good chance of
being accepted this knowledge of the process needs to be accounted for in the
development work.

5. Speed of change A fast introduction of the PDM system will reduce the
problems with working in multiple systems within the company and will provide
the potential benefits of PDM faster. However, this may be risky since PDM still is
a relatively young technology that is not entirely fail-safe. The interaction in a
software as complex as a PDM system which extensively uses information transfer
over computer networks tends to need a lot of attention.
 SUCCESSFUL PDM IMPLEMENTATION

In general the types of companies that are implementing PDM are as follows:

(1) UK aerospace: 50%; (2) Automotive: 35%; (3) Small high technology,
high growth manufacturers, especially if they manufacture and sell outside the
UK: 15%.

The main usage of PDM in industry are as follows:

(1) 89% CAD management;
(2) 49% BOM and configuration management – closely linked to CAD
management and is frequently used to provide MRP/ERP systems with good
quality information;
(3) 17% word-processed documents or spread- sheets

These are:
1. good preparation and implementation;
2. good education and training of employees;
3. clear strategy and specification of business pro-cesses;
4. good evaluation and selection of suitable systems
THANK YOU