A holistic Product Lifecycle Management framework facing the challenges of 21st century

Consistent definition, categorization and operationalization of products (e.g. extended products, bundles, etc) delivered to global markets and customized for different buyer segments is one of the major challenges for the Lifecycle Management. Each lifecycle encompasses the processes, information, support systems and people involved in delivering the related business functions. It can be argued that process supporting technologies/solutions like WFMS, PDM-System etc exist today for the creation of a seamless environment for accessing, manipulating and reasoning about product information that is being produced in fragmented and distributed environment. A holistic approach that is suitable for aligning the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) business requirements (like process flexibility, shorter time to market etc) to the potentials of new technology driven concepts in the information management like SOA is nevertheless still missing. The authors give reasons why the holistic view on the product lifecycle management as well as the link between an intercompany wide information management is critical for an efficient PLM and present an integrated approach taking these aspects into account. In this paper four building blocks of Next Generation PLM are introduced. The PLM Meta Model makes up the first building block. It defines the constraints and rules for decomposing the product functionality into meaningful modules. The PLM IT-Architecture represents the second part and describes the IT-components and their interrelation utilized for the purpose of PLM. A PLM-Process methodology as a basis for describing the relevant activities is attached in the third building block. The final building block is constituted by the Lifecycle Value Management concept for steering the PLMprocess on a strategic level like, among other things, by considering portfolio effects. The paper closes with the presentation of a short case study validating the proposed concept for a company in the service industry.