Next generation product lifecycle management (PLM)

Abstract

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is an established industrial approach constituting an enterprise integration platform for engineering processes, data, systems, and the involved actors throughout the entire lifecycle of a product. Based on comprehensive literature and own surveys, as well as on the experience gathered in current research projects, the paper in hand summarizes the main development trends in PLM. Due to the shift of most enterprises from selling physical products to offering sustainable Product Service Systems (PSS), and influenced by different economic and social drivers, the PLM approach will be extended to manage the growing complexity of processes and data. Furthermore, next generation PLM systems will lead back knowledge about the use of PSS to earlier development phases to make the development process more efficient and to continuously improve the performance of PSS offerings. Therefore, next generation PLM will consider new data models, PLM processes, and knowledge-based methods. Finally, new PLM systems will adopt a more flexible IT architecture. The main PLM development trends are illustrated by examples from different PLM research projects.