What is Project Life Cycle management?

Product lifecycle management (PLM) is a process very common business which refers to managing a company's entire product lifestyle. This includes processes starting with conception to design to manufacture until service and disposal. It is not just a business component but also one of the cornerstones of a business organization's IT structure and in fact a substantial component of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). All companies, to be competitive and efficient, need to have a mechanism in effectively managing all communications and information relating to their customers as implemented through a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Supply Chain Management (CRM) systems which are two or the resources with the Enterprise Resource Planning.
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) describes products mainly from a business and engineering perspective. In the business perspective, it is focused on the life of a product in relation to cost and sales measure.
Although PLM implementations may vary, there are three primary areas of concern in the implementation. These areas are Product and Portfolio Management (PPM), Product Design (CAx), Manufacturing Planning (MPM) and Product Data Management (PDM)
The creation and central management of all company products along with the technology employed in access product knowledge and information is the heart of a PLM implementation. In fact, such tools as Computer-aided design (CAD), Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) and Product Data Management (PDM) emerged from PLM as a discipline. CAD, CAM and PDM can also be considered as integration of a PLM implementation.
Some features involved in an IT PLM implementation include Storage and retrieval of product information; Handling of business process flows which subsequently include change management and revision control; Product structure modeling and management including product configurations, bills of materials, product variations and product versioning; Project tracking; and Resource planning
When efficiently implemented, a Product lifecycle management many bring tremendous benefits like improved quality of products, reduced costs in prototyping, having a robust framework for optimization of products, savings through re-use of original data, reduced waste products, savings through the complete integration of engineering workflow and reduced time to marketing of products.
Today's companies find investment in ERP which commonly has PLM integrated a very rewarding move with tremendous Return of investment beneifts. It is estimated that ERPspecifically PLM related services spending can be valued at around $15 billion every year.
Various software vendors and developers offer different solutions for PLM. Some of the biggest ERP providers, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP have developed and are selling a wide array of tools tailor made for PLM. These top of the line PLM solutions may include features like supply deep integration with CAD tools.
SAP gets $11B from PLM, SSA Global while Oracle Corporation and Autodesk gets $1.5B but this where both companies' main revenue come from. Other big names in the PLM arena are IBM with $88.9B and EDS with $19.8B.
Coming up in tomorrow's blog, we will try to dissect Oracle E-Business suite whose PLM is also making it waves among business companies. We will also try to dissect other PLM implementations from other vendors.