'PLM by any other name would smell as sweet', Bob Brown

Because definitions of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) are so varied, vendors run the risk of confusing their customers in the manufacturing sector with seemingly contradictory statements, says Cambashi Principal Consultant, Bob Brown.

The core of PLM is about providing access to a unique description of the product and the possibility of accessing all the relevant history at any point in the product's lifecycle - and making this information available to a far wider audience of design stakeholders than ever before. This definition covers an enormous amount of ground and some very complex technology.

At the conceptual level the proposition of PLM is simple but the devil is in the detail. "The PLM vision, especially for an extended enterprise, often makes basic assumptions which are at best unproven and may simply be wrong", says Brown. Three of the most important of these assumptions are that: users will have to change their basic design process; the participants in the PLM process will share all relevant data willingly; and partner organisations in the extended enterprise will have business objectives that are in alignment. The vendors may say "our solution can do X". Brown contends that the sentence is in fact incomplete and should finish with "provided Y happens first". Helping customers to understand what is possible and appropriate for them is a more certain route to a successful project than selling an unrealistic vision that has been built on a false premise.

April 2002: Cambashi's latest CAx market review is now available - please complete the free information form to receive it.

Also of interest:

In 2004, will PLM and SCM still be recognisable TLAs?
Cambashi's vision is for an industry network, sometimes referred to by the acronym Computer Integrated Industry (CII). Rather than the pillars supporting the enterprise, the emphasis is on pillars supporting synchronization between enterprises. The four pillars would be product marketing; optimisation of resources and processes; programme management; and management by objectives.

A definition of product lifecycle management and supply chain management systems

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