Product life cycle management and product development: Bibliometric analysis and literature classification

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present a bibliometric analysis and classification of the literature on the concepts Product Life Cycle Management (PLM), New Product Development (NPD), Environmental Sustainability (ES) and their interfaces. The ISI Web of Knowledge database was accessed, as was the CAPES Brazilian portal, which is linked to various databases. The analysis considers publications between 2006 and 2010. The results show that papers are published in a dispersed way in different journals. The majority of the papers adopt case studies as a methodological research approach, but there are also many theoretical-based papers. Concerning the nature of the data, qualitative approaches are more commonly used than are quantitative ones, and most papers consider descriptive studies. One of the reasons that qualitative approaches are used more frequently may be that these concepts are not well consolidated in the literature. The examined publications incorporated the concept of ES and PLM in NPD and are more extensively applied in industries, supply chain and software development. In general, the publications emphasize PDP improvement, performance assessment and the integration of information from different areas. Finally, the article concludes that the literature converges to an integration of the concepts of environmental sustainability and PLM within the current practices of NPD.