This article studies the role of product lifecycle management (PLM) in industrial engineering. The basic concepts of PLM—product data management, engineering change management, and product structure management—were also discussed. PLM provides data and management capabilities to reduce the non-value-added tasks required of engineers. It also increases engineering productivity, provides insight into engineering efforts, and improves product quality and customer satisfaction. Companies are receiving significant value and return from their PLM investments. Many companies begin implementing PLM by establishing a single source of product data, or product record. Most PLM solutions offer sophisticated interfaces to many design automation and office applications, which reduce the need to capture, store, and validate product data. Product designs are maintained as assemblies and parts in the PLM system, and that arrangement allows engineers easy searching when they are looking, for example, for legacy components, with software providing a critical control and value portion of the product. With PLM, disparate engineering teams work more collaboratively.
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March 2011
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Why Care About PLM?
Care about Product Quality? About Reducing Your Workload? Then you Should Care About Product Lifecycle Management.
Alan F. Mendel is a business executive with more than 25 years of management and consulting experience in the technology, manufacturing, software, and services industries. He founded Focus 20 LLC, a PLM consultancy in Salt Lake City.
Mechanical Engineering. Mar 2011, 133(03): 42-43 (2 pages)
Published Online: March 1, 2011
Citation
Mendel, A. F. (March 1, 2011). "Why Care About PLM?." ASME. Mechanical Engineering. March 2011; 133(03): 42–43. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.2011-MAR-5
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