Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) (SAP Library - Product Lifecycle Management (PLM))

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)

Purpose

Product Lifecycle Management is a collection of solutions with which you digitally create, maintain and make available product information in the whole company and for the entire life cycle of a product.

As an ambitious company, you do not want to just keep up with the international competition, you want to increase your competitiveness in the field of new information technology. Only a flexible company that optimizes daily business in all life cycle phases of a product can achieve a competitive advantage. Product and process quality as well as knowledge management are essential factors for competitiveness in all these phases. Through the medium of the Internet , you optimize your business processes and business models for industrial relations.

By means of the integrated applications: SAP Customer Relationship Management, SAP Supply Chain Management and Business Information Warehouse, mySAP.com opens up the Internet as a working area for you.

PLM offers you the functions with which you can achieve the following aims:

The Workplace is an open portal in the World Wide Web and offers you access to all information and applications that you require to work effectively with all internal and external business partners.

PLM links the management of product and process data with other Internet applications such as Program Management, Change and Configuration Management and Engineering Collaboration. By using these applications, you improve coordination and cooperation during the execution of your business processes.

You do not just make your product knowledge (for example, document, product structure or project information) available to colleagues in your company, using the Internet , your external business partners are also brought directly into the communication chain.

Features

The following graphic shows the applications that PLM enables you to use.

The numerous functions are available from the following applications:

Application	Task
Product and process structures	With these functions, you maintain product data (such as material BOMs and other basic data like documents and materials for example) as well as process data (such as task lists or production orders)
Program management	With the SAP project system functions, you plan your projects. For example, you maintain the Project Builder, the project structures and the project data, then you carry out cost accounting and budget planning.
Lifecycle Change and Configuration Management	With the functions for Engineering Change Management, Order Change Management, Configuration Management and Claim Management, you organize the development and change processes in all life cycle phases
Engineering Collaboration	This function makes communicating with external business partners over the internet easier.