Twenty Years of PLM – the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Abstract

Looking back at the past 20 years of experience in implementation and customization of PLM applications, it can be observed that the technological complexity of the systems has increased dramatically, but it does not match the growing complexity of the business. These observations are discussed in research as well as in the PLM blogger community. Vendors implement the new technologies primarily on the upper application levels, which produces on one side applications with the latest technology, that represent the latest research trends. On the other hand, on the lower levels of the architectures often use the same (old) technologies. The increasing number of integrated capabilities creates more diverse PLM-systems. And thus, creates a broader customer base. However, this brings the individual company and existing customers only a limited benefit. In contrast, systems increase in complexity, which is barely manageable-from the vendors and especially from the customer's perspective. The result is little added value and at the high price of lost flexibility. This increase in system complexity, does not coincide with the increase of complexity of enterprises, which is mainly driven by growing organizational complexity (collaboration, decentralization) and increasing product complexity. Industrial companies require a deeper and better support of their existing processes and greater flexibility in adapting the tools to a changing business environment. These findings result from a structured review of more than 30 PLM projects in various industries, from SME's to globally active large companies, 6 primary cases will be presented in this article.

Smart Dust in the Industrial Economic Sector – On Application Cases in Product Lifecycle Management

“…We hope that our findings acquire vogue in manifold contexts. For researchers in the scientific community on product lifecycle management as an overview and inspiration [34], for industrial developers and users of product lifecycle management as technology scouting [35], and finally for the society for a sensitization on such disruptive technologies [36].…”

Identification of barriers to PLM institutionalization in large manufacturing organizations

“…Enríquez et al (2019) proposed a model to choose the best suited PLM systems and validated the model in an aircraft firm. Meier et al (2017) discussed the last 20 years of PLM by considering the participation of the blogger community also in case of PLM implementation. They studied the six cases based on the need of collaboration and integration of all enterprise systems in a common platform.…”

Group decision support for product lifecycle management

“…The decisions that arise, and the decision-making processes that are necessary over a product's lifecycle must also be supported to enable an organization to manage its product portfolio However, decision-making in PLM is under-researched (Eigner et al 2011). PLM review papers such as Meier et al (2017) and Nyffenegger, Rivest and Braesch (2016) and practitioner literature such as Fleming et al (2017) do not show evidence of specific support for decision-making in PLM.…”