ROHIT S PRABHU

USN 4KV16ME051
8th B sec
Mechanical Engineering Dept.
KVGCE
PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE MANAGEMENT

ASSIGNMENT 1
1. Explain Product Life Cycle Management
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. PLM manages the whole
product 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.
There are five phases in the product lifecycle . In each of these five phases, the
product is in a different state. During the ideation phase, the product is just an idea in
people’s heads. During the definition phase, the ideas are being converted into a
detailed description. By the end of the realisation phase, the product exists in its final
form (for example, as a car) in which it can be used by a customer. During the
use/support phase, the product is with the customer who is using it. Eventually the
product gets to a phase in which it’s no longer useful. It’s retired by the company, and
disposed of by the customer.
PLM is the business activity of managing, in the most effective way, a
company’s products all the way across their lifecycles. It includes activities such as
the organisation and co-ordination of product-related resources and tasks.

2. Explain Product Life Cycle Management Model With Relevant

Sketch.
There are five phases in the generic product lifecycle . In each of these five
phases, the product is in a different state. During the imagination phase, the product is
just an idea in people’s heads. During the definition phase, the ideas are being
converted into a detailed description. By the end of the realisation phase, the product
exists in its final form (for example, as a car) in which it can be used by a customer.
During the use/support phase, the product is with the customer who is using it.
Eventually the product gets to a phase in which it’s no longer useful. It’s retired by the
company, and disposed of by the customer.
The specific activities that take place across the lifecycle vary from one
industry to another. As a result, companies in a particular industry may have a view of
the product lifecycle that is specific to their industry. However, whatever the specifics
of a particular company or industry, its activities can be mapped, in some way, to the
five phases of the generic product lifecycle.
 Management of products includes activities such as: organisation and co-ordination of
product-related resources and tasks; decision-taking; setting objectives; control of results.
Ideation - A product must be managed in all phases of the lifecycle to make sure that
everything works well, and that the product makes good money for the company.A product
needs to be managed when it’s an idea. Product ideas need to be managed to make sure, for
example, that they aren’t lost or misunderstood.
Definition - A product needs to be managed when it’s being defined. For example, a
product development project has to be managed to be sure the product meets customer
requirements.
Realisation - A product needs to be managed when it’s being realised. For example,
it’s important that the correct version of the product definition is used during production.
Use/Service - A product needs to be managed when it’s in use. For example, the
product must be correctly maintained, taking account of its production date, previous
upgrades, changes in the market and technical evolution
Disposal/Recycling - A product needs to be managed at disposal time. For example,
taking care that poisonous components and toxic waste from the product don’t get anywhere
near sources of drinking water.

3.List the needs of PLM and Benefits of PLM

Needs of the PLM:-

● There Is no Alternative- PLM is focused on “the product” . It addresses the heart of
the company, its defining resource, the source of its wealth, its products. That’s the
role of PLM, which is why PLM is so important.
PLM improves the activity of product development, without which a company
won’t survive. The source of future revenues for a company is the creation of new
products and services. PLM is the activity that enables a company to grow revenues
by improving innovation, reducing time-to-market for new products, and providing
superb support and new services for existing products. PLM helps bring new products
to market faster. It’s important for a company to bring a product to market quickly.
Otherwise the customer will choose a competitor’s product before the company’s
product gets to market.
 ● The Complex Environment of Products - One of the reasons that PLM emerged in the
early years of the 21st Century is that the environment in which products were
managed became increasingly complex. And to make matters worse, the environment
underwent frequent changes. The changes in the complex environment of products are
of different types and come from different sources. Macroeconomic and geopolitical
changes can affect companies developing, producing and supporting products.
In addition, changes have associated risks. Changes in one area may lead to
enhanced risks in another area. If the risks were only related to one component or
change in the environment, it might be easy to manage them. Unfortunately though,
they are often related to many changes, making their management difficult.
● Opportunities - PLM enables companies to take advantage of the many
product-related opportunities available at the beginning of the 21st Century. Some of
these opportunities are the result of new technologies. Others are due to social and
environmental changes, or to macroeconomic forces such as globalisation.
The number of opportunities opening up in the 21st Century seems boundless.
Perhaps it was too risky to pursue them when the product development process was
out of control, production runs in faraway countries had unexpected problems, and
customers complained continually about product problems. But that was before PLM.
Now PLM’s here, allowing companies to develop and support tiptop services and
products across the lifecycle. PLM can bring benefits across the lifecycle
● BenefitS - PLM provides benefits throughout the product lifecycle. Examples include
getting products to market faster, providing better support for their use, and managing
the end of their life better. With its focus on the product, companies are looking for
PLM to provide benefits in the areas of financial performance, time reduction, quality
improvement and business improvement.

Benefits of PLM :-

● Financial, Time, Quality

1. Revenue Increase:- The source of future revenues for a company is the creation of
new products and services. PLM is the activity that enables a company to grow
revenues by improving innovation, reducing time-to-market for new products, and
providing superb support and new services for existing products
2. Cost Reduction :- PLM enables a company to reduce product-related costs. It’s
important, for several reasons, to reduce these costs. Firstly, that will boost profits.
Secondly, if costs are not reduced, the customer may choose a competitor’s product
that costs less than the company’s product
3. Time Reduction:- PLM helps bring new products to market faster. It’s important for a
company to bring a product to market quickly. Otherwise the customer will choose a
competitor’s product before the company’s product gets to market. Getting the
 product to market earlier also means revenues are generated earlier. And the product’s
life is lengthened
4. Quality Improvement :- Quality Improvement is also an important reason for
introducing PLM. Again, there are opportunities across the lifecycle.
● Operational
The reasons to implement PLM differ from one company to another, and
depend on the particular position and objectives of the company. PLM provides
benefits throughout the product lifecycle. Examples include providing better support
for product use, and managing the end of product life better. PLM enables better
support of customers’ use of products. It’s important for a company to support
customers’ use of its product. Otherwise they may stop using the company’s product.
They may start to use a competitor’s product instead. PLM gets products under
control across the lifecycle. As a result, managers face less risk and fire-fighting. They
can spend more time on preparing an outstanding future with awesome products.
PLM gives transparency about what’s happening over the product lifecycle. It
offers executives visibility about what’s really happening with products. It gives
visibility over product development, modification and retirement projects. Without
PLM, executives are often faced with a huge mass of conflicting information about a
product. PLM gives them the opportunity to manage better. With access to the right
information, they can make better decisions.
Collaboration has become increasingly important in the early 21st Century
environment of networked and fragmented research, development and support. The
Web and collaborative technologies that support the PLM activity enable research,
development and engineering to be carried out in a well-managed way in multiple
locations .
● Taking Opportunities
PLM enables companies to take advantage of the many product-related
opportunities available at the beginning of the 21st Century. Some of these
opportunities are the result of new technologies. Others are due to social and
environmental changes, or to macroeconomic forces such as globalisation.
Globalisation led to huge opportunities. Billions of people can now benefit
from products to which they previously had no access. Companies can offer products
to a global market of more than 7.5 billion customers and users. The resulting
opportunities for sales and profits are enormous. So are the potential risks.
For most companies, it’s only recently that such opportunities have been
available. In the 1990s, although many companies were international, or
multi-national, only a few were able to offer a product throughout the world. Others
were limited, for one reason or another, to smaller markets. As a result of the changes
in the product environment, the potential market for most companies is no longer a
few hundred million customers for the product in a local regional market
4.List the reasons for implementing PDM systems.

● Data vault and document management - PDM systems consist of central locations,
referred to as data vaults, used in the control of all types of product information. Data
vaults are either physical locations in the file system (any kind of folder or directory)
or databases. They provide data access control, data security, and integrity.
When a PDM system is deployed in an organization or in a project, the system
administrator must define how the data vaults are to be used. When the user checks
out a document, it will be under PDM control in a work location—a personal physical
file location. Only one specific user is permitted to read and write in this work
location. Any change made in the document here will not be visible to other users.
The document may be changed several times before it will be checked in again into
another data vault, the work in process (WIP) vault. All of the members of the project
team are provided with access to the WIP vault for viewing or altering the information
it contains.

● Workflow management - PDM systems record information at each step in a process,

and users can review the change history at any time. Audit and historical records are
maintained. Workflow management can help define and control changes in any kind
of product data. All companies must manage their changes effectively, whether using
a tool for managing changes and workflows for strict change control or using manual
procedures for managing all changes on paper. Thus, workflow management is a
critical part in the product definition life cycle to ensure that the right information is
available to the correct users at the proper time. It includes defining the steps in the
process, the rules and activities associated with the steps, the rules for approval of
each step, and the assignment of users to provide approval support.
● Product structure management - When designing a complex product, the management
of its component parts is as important as the management of the documents that
describe the product. A product structure comprises components (elements), the
externally visible properties of those components, and the relationships between them.

Product structure management includes the following activities:

◗ Identification and control of product configurations;
◗ Management of the development and selection of product variants, including
platforms, options, alternates, and substitutes;
◗ Linking of product definition data to the structure;
◗ Allowance of various domain-specific views of a product structure, such as design
and manufacturing views;
◗ Transfer of product structure and other data in both directions between PDM and
manufacturing resource planning (MRP) or enterprise resource planning (ERP)
systems.
● Classification management - Classification management is the classification of
standard components in a uniform way. To support reuse of standard components, the
components are classified and information about them is stored in the PDM system as
common attributes. To ensure that a new product reaches the market in the shortest
possible time, the reuse of parts of products is essential. Reuse is supported by the
possibility of classifying components and attaching attributes to them. These
attributes can later be used for querying and retrieval of components to be used. Reuse
also leads to greater product standardization, reduced redesign, shorter time to market,
savings in purchasing and fabrication, and reduced inventories. Reuse can be at any
level of a product in the product structure (e.g., engines, wheels, antennas, software
modules, screws, and bolts).

● Program management - The support for project management provided by a PDM

system involves standard functions such as definition of work breakdown structures
(WBS), resource allocation, and project tracking. The purpose of this kind of
functionality in a PDM system is that it enables the relation of the project data to the
product data. This makes it possible to see with which parts of a product a specific
project is working and the extent to which resources have been expended on this
particular part of the product.
● Communication and notification - As part of the implementation of workflow support,
notifications can be automatically sent to the users. A notification can be sent to make
a user aware of a specific operation or when a specific state has been reached.
● Data transport and translation - PDM stores and manages data produced by many
different applications. This information is often retrieved for reading or changing in
the same application, but there may be a need to read the data in another application.
In a PDM system, predefined translators can be used for converting data from one
application for use in another and for displaying information. The system
administrator sets up the translators and the users therefore do not need to know
which data translators to apply. Events can trigger automatic data translation from one
application format to another.
● Image services - Visualization tools support collaborative work by making it possible
for all users to view images. Images can be stored and accessed as any other data in
the PDM systems or in, for example, CAD systems. Scanned documents,
two-dimensional drawings, and three-dimensional CAD models can then be viewed
and marked up using standard visualization capabilities.
● System administration - PDM systems, like any other computer system, need system
administration. For PDM systems, this administration is more complicated and
contains more tasks These systems can be customized in many ways: matching
business needs, tailoring the user interface to satisfy particular needs, integrating
third-party applications (tools), adding new functionality, changing terminology,
tailoring system information messages, and extending the standard data model to
include company-specific data types. The customization, and the consequent
 requirements for education and maintenance, will need resources and efforts to be
successful.
● Application integration - Integration with authoring, visualization, and other
collaborative tools is important to establish a single source of product data.
Information is created once for use throughout the product development process, and
one source electronically colocates geographically dispersed authors and users.

5. Write a short note on PLM Feasibility Study.

The range of possible PLM Initiatives is very wide. The PLM Initiative of a particular
company may fall anywhere in the range between “supremely strategic” and “totally
tactical”. For a company with little knowledge or experience of PLM, a feasibility study can
be a good way to find out what type of approach, and what level of response, is appropriate.
Different options have different costs and different benefits. Examining different
options will make it clear to everybody concerned what the PLM Initiative is going to
address, what it’s likely to cost, and what it’s expected to achieve. It’s important to make
clear to everybody concerned just what the PLM Initiative is expected to achieve. The results
of different approaches are very different. There’s a danger that some people will expect
strategic results from a tactical approach and a tactical investment. But that’s unlikely to
happen.

In the Feasibility Study, the activities for each of the four options are similar:
• document the name, the objectives and the scope of the option .
• identify the benefits of achieving the objectives, and estimate their financial value.
• identify the activities and effort required to achieve the objectives, and estimate their cost.
• create the business case; create an outline plan for implementation of the activities
identified.

6.Explain the opportunities for PLM in 21st century paradigm.

In the domain of the management of a company’s products, the paradigm also changed. A
new paradigm, the PLM Paradigm, emerged in the early 21st Century.

The following sections look at how these key parameters changed.

● Organisation of Work - With PLM, instead of organising by departments, companies
define and work in their business processes. Examples of these processes include New
Product Development (NPD), Engineering Change Management (ECM), and Product
Portfolio Management (PPM). A business process is an organised set of activities,
with clearly defined objectives, scope, inputs and outputs, which creates business
value.Under the PLM paradigm, the way that a company manages its products across
 the lifecycle must be proactively designed and defined. It’s formally documented in
the company’s Quality Manual.
Over time, this approach led to incompatibilities at departmental, group and
section borders, waste, gaps, contradictory versions of the same data, information
silos, islands of automation, overlapping networks, duplicate activities, serial work,
ineffective fixes and product recalls.The end result was long product development and
support cycles, customers having problems with products, reduced revenues and
higher costs.
● Orientation - With PLM, the orientation of the management of products changed from
the previous technical orientation to a business orientation. PLM is a business activity.
It’s carried out to meet business objectives of increasing product revenues, reducing
product-related costs, maximising the value of the product portfolio, and maximising
the value of current and future products for both customers and shareholders. In
addition to business objectives related to improved financial performance, PLM has
objectives related to time reduction and quality improvement.
With the previous paradigm, each department implemented its own methods
and techniques to support these activities.Under the previous paradigm,
product-related issues weren’t considered to be a subject for management. They were
left to the techies.

● Information Calculation, Storage and Communication - PLM is a digital paradigm.

Under the PLM paradigm, products are managed across the lifecycle with digital
computers. Calculations are made by computer. Information is stored in digital
memory. It’s communicated over digital networks.
In the previous paradigm, people used analogue and mechanical calculation
and communication devices such as slide rules and typewriters. Information storage
and communication was mainly paper-based.

● Span of Interest - With the change to PLM, the company’s span of interest about the
product changed from “Design to Factory Gate” to “Complete Product Lifecycle”.
With PLM, a company manages its products all the way across their lifecycles, from
the very first idea through to retirement and disposal. The paradigm fits to
environmental requirements and Circular Economy concepts.
● Value of Product Data - Product data is all the data about products. With PLM,
product data is seen as being of high value. It’s Intellectual Property. It’s a strategic
corporate asset. There are security procedures to protect it.
Under the previous paradigm, the concept of “product data” didn’t exist. Data
belonged to departments, so there was Engineering data, Manufacturing data,
After-Sales data. Part of this data was blueprints. Often they’d be kept in a
departmental store, out of the way, maybe in a cellar. Managing the Engineering
drawing store was seen as low-level, something for people who weren’t good at
designing new products.
 ● Management Approach - The previous paradigm was departmental. This was a great
way to control the company, but not to operate it. It separated people into many
independent specialised groups, all focused on different tasks or activities. With the
previous paradigm, there wasn’t a holistic approach. There was an atomistic approach.
Companies didn’t manage products in a joined-up way across.
Activities such as Product Data Management (PDM) and Business Process
Management (BPM) focused on one particular resource. The objective was to do one
thing at a time.
● Focus - With the emergence of PLM, the focus changed. The focus of the PLM
paradigm is the product. That’s what the customer buys. Products are the source of a
company’s revenues. Corporate revenues result from product sales. Products are
important! There’s little in a company more important than its products, and the
management of their development and use. Without those products, there will be no
customers and no revenues. With PLM, the rule is “focus on the product and the
customer”. Customers buy great products.
In the previous paradigm for managing products, there wasn’t an agreed focus.
Some people were focused on doing Great Engineering. Others on interdepartmental
dogfights, or cost-cutting. Others on listening to the Voice of the Customer. However,
companies can have all the knowledge in the world about their customers, and what
the customers have said, but they won’t get a sale without a competitive product.

7.“PLM is Holistic”, Justify .

Activities such as Product Data Management (PDM) and Business Process

Management (BPM) focused on one particular resource. The objective was to do one thing at
a time. With the emergence of PLM, the approach to management of products changed from
“divide and rule” and “separate”. It changed to “joined-up” and “holistic”.
PLM has a holistic approach to the management of a product. It addresses all the
resources together. It addresses products, data, applications, business processes, people, work
methods and equipment together. PLM joins up many previously separate and independent
processes, disciplines, functions and applications, each of which, though addressing the same
product, had its own vocabulary, rules, culture and language. PLM is “joined-up”. With PLM,
the organisation manages the product in a continuous coherent joined-up way across the
lifecycle. All the product-related issues are united under PLM and are addressed together in a
joined-up way.With PLM, to bring together previously disparate and fragmented activities,
systems and processes. Take a joined-up approach, a holistic approach, not an atomistic,
separate approach. Get everyone going in the same direction.
In many PLM Initiatives companies don’t aim to manage products across their
lifecycles in an explicit, “joined-up”, continuous way. Instead they continue to manage
separately, department-by-department. For example, they’ll have a Product Data Management
(PDM) system for Engineering. And another PDM system for Service. Not surprisingly,
things continue to fall through the cracks. And the company doesn’t achieve its PLM
objectives. PLM success will be measured in four areas:
● financial performance
● time reduction
● quality improvement
● business improvement.
PLM brings together everything to do with the product, including product
development, product recall and product liability. It manages, in an integrated way, the parts,
the products and the product portfolio. It manages the whole product range, from individual
part through individual product to the entire product portfolio. With PLM, all the
product-related issues are united under the PLM umbrella. They’re addressed together in a
joined-up way. The approach is holistic. PLM is seen as the way to address all the
product-related issues.
We need to get a full understanding of our customers and the way our products
behave. We need to understand the nature of the future market out there. We need to
understand what customers really want. We need to understand what their usage of our
products is telling us. As a result of our PLM approach, customers will be pleased and proud
users of our product.

8.Write detailed description on PDM systems and its major components.

PDM system containing both a metadata database and data items managed by the
system but stored in an ordinary file system. The figure also depicts an example of metadata
stored in a business item. Note the reference to the data item file location.
 Figure shows an example of PDM architecture. The example shows how a corporate
server stores common information used by other servers. This information in the corporate
server defines what the other servers must be able to access and what kind of data they may
modify. The corporate server information also includes the location of all other servers in the
network. The local area server provides services to networks geographically separated from
the corporate server. Locally, a workgroup server runs one or more database servers. The
purpose of the workgroup server is to provide better performance when the data is stored
locally. The workstation runs the client software. In another solution, the server runs the
client application, and in this case the client is only a Web browser.

Major Components of PDM System:-

● PDM database:- A PDM system uses a database to store data in a structured way. A
database offers a query language, which is used to make queries to the database to
extract information. A database can also manage multiple users, security, and backup
of data. PDM manages metadata and file data, where the metadata is stored in the
database, and file data is stored in PDM-controlled file locations.Metadata is used to
support PDM functions, such as search for information. Relevant attributes must be
stored with the data item for a user to be able to make relevant search criteria.

● Data vault:- A data vault is used as a repository to control product information

represented as business items and data items in the database. The vault is logical data
storage used to store and manage access to documents and files stored electronically
and produced by various applications. Depending on the chosen installation strategy,
the administrator may choose either to incorporate all files (data items) in the PDM
database or just to store the references to the actual file in the file system in the
database.

● Data replication in a distributed environment:- To be able to perform distributed

development, where project team members are located at various geographically
dispersed sites, data has to be available at all of the sites. This must be done in a
controlled way to avoid inconsistency of data. PDM systems have distributed
replicated databases, in which it is possible to replicate metadata or both metadata and
files throughout the network.The metadata must always be distributed upward in the
hierarchy, toward the corporate server.When a user searches for metadata, the
workgroup server is searched first. If this metadata is not found on the workgroup
server, the local area server is searched, and finally the corporate server is searched. If
the metadata contains a link to a data item, this link can be used to fetch the data item
from its location.
The data items are always stored locally on the workgroup servers.
These gives the teams located at the sites good performance, as each file can be quite
large, resulting in disturbing download times. In some PDM configurations, data
items are distributed to other sites (or servers) as well, which may cause performance
overhead. This is used when the local site needs all data with good performance, fast
downloading of data, and guaranteed availability of data even when the central server
is not up and running