Product Life Cycle Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4500 words

Product Life Cycle Management - Essay Example Secondly, to explore how PLM could help in different stages of Computer Aided Design (CAD) design or where PLM could contribute and involve in a new product development. This paper also incorporates the case studies of PLM and how adoption of PLM has helped SMEs to secure an established position in the industry. The project analyzes important studies and then conducts a primary survey that centers on SMEs adoption of PLM. The results of the studies have confirmed the conclusion that the SMEs have grown with the acceptance of new sophisticated technologies. PLM strategy is a solution addressing many components for managing product data (Kemmerer, 1999) and provides the necessary requirements and capabilities companies need to successfully manage information and facilitate communication and collaboration across the entire product lifecycle from idea through retirement [PTC n.d. ]. In fact, PLM is the extension of PDM (Abramovici and Sieg, 2002) which appeared during 1980s. With the advent of Computer Aided Design (CAD) solutions, engineering design entered a new era. Parallel with the continued development of Computer -Aided Design and Manufacturing and Engineering (CAD/CAM/CAE) tools, Product lifecycle management (PLM) is the crucial business approach that assigns a constant set of business solutions on behalf of the cooperative establishment, management, distribution, and application of product definition orientation across the extended business from abstraction to edge of life and it is now clearly acknowledged by many firms as basic to the product innovation evolution, and a corporation's top-notch and fundamental accomplishment (Stark, 2003, 4) PLM is the method of managing a firm's products all the way across their life cycles in the most effective way. If the firms start losing control over its products, then it will lead to adverse effects. A product does not exist when it is at its development stage. That is the time when it becomes difficult to manage. This is practically the reason why there is a need to completely involve PLM in the process so as to be sure that the product would make a good introduction and growth within the industry that it is involved with. Penetrating the industry totally is not that easy, this is a truth even for those products whose brands have already been established in the market.1 Hence, to be able to assure that a particular business product or service would make it to the competition, the administrators of the company should know about how to use PLM cycle effectively for their own product or service's popularity in the market probably resulting to more improved rate of profit returns. Ho wever, it could be noticed too that as the introduction of the product is launched, the management as to how to retain its effect in the market is what should be given attention next. As soon as existence of a product is ensured, the problem of managing that product arises. With the advent of PLM, the products are able to reach the market fast and better support from the customer's side is guaranteed. It is necessary to bring a product into the market otherwise; one firm will lose the customers to other firm. The fact that competition is tough in the market, being the first one to introduce a new product is an important part of the process.2 This fact is a special