Business Strategy and the Role of Engineering Product Data Management: A Literature Review and Summary of the Emerging Research Questions

Abstract

This paper seeks to review the business strategy and product data management literature in an attempt to establish the nature of the relationship between them. One obvious linking theme is that of information systems strategies and their alignment with business processes, and therefore attention has also been given to this body of literature. The conclusions are that there is little well-researched understanding about the nature of the relationship and little concrete evidence of the relative importance of product data management in achieving overall business objectives. Therefore, if manufacturing organizations are to be able to invest wisely in product data management, substantial research is required to address the fundamental business and technical issues that have emerged as a result of this review.

Defining one product data for a product

“…In addition to the above elements, incorporating market strategy, product strategy and IT strategy into the strategy process ( Figure 1) provides a good framework to understand the hierarchy of the data required for new product development (NPD) (Harris, 1996). This ties in with the well-known triangle of processes, data and IT, which form the basis of managing data (Kropsu-Vehkapera et al, 2009;Silvola et al, 2011).…”

Analysis of Concurrent Engineering Applications in the Information Quality Process

“…Using scientific techniques (e.g., Operations Research, Optimization Techniques) it is possible to quantitatively and objectively arrive at exact knowledge. But, in most manufacturing related problems, there is no certain knowledge available to initiate an improvement effort, for example, planning for next year's product line ex-Figure 6. Manufacturing, IQP, and CE relationships.…”

“…These four initiatives consist of subsystem testing, system integration and testing, system testing, and acceptance testing. These four initiatives are effective through four basic verification techniques [6]:…”

Engineering document management strategy: Analysis of requirements, choice of direction and system implementation

“…As with other purchases of packaged software, user involvement is critical for success (46). Knowles describes a process for selecting and implementing a document management system (47), and this has much in common with the process for PDM implementation (7). An industrial case study is documented by Port (48).…”