PLM offers you a standard, universal data model for all product and process data. Product information from all life cycle phases, from product development, through production right up to service, is available centrally to management , to the users involved and to partners. The development of a product occurs across all areas. Even in the early design phase knowledge about the behavior of individual planning objects or about the schedule of later production and service processes has to be taken into consideration. Consequently, communication between all the partners involved is of particular importance.

• In connection with project management, you can create and manage project-orientated documents for all life cycle phases and also efficiently exchange the product information contained therein with all partners of a business process.
  Throughout the entire development phase of a product, the product structure is enriched and completed with information. The information that describes products is, for example, stored in documents, in material masters in the Product Variant Structure (PVS) or in the traditional BOM. Task lists and production orders transfer information about production quantities, times, schedules, resources or capacities, to the production process

• The design and change process that takes place in a CAD system is totally integrated in the related business processes by means of the CAD interface. If the engineer, for example, wants to query the delivery time of a complement part for a material exchange, he must not leave his usual engineering environment but rather, check this data from his CAD system.
  From the design drawings that an engineer creates in the CAD system, the BOMs are created and the documents generated in the SAP system.

• Digital Mock-Up Viewing enables all interested areas throughout the company to visualize the new or changed product already in the development phase as a 3D model, at a point in time when a prototype is still not in existence. Being able to see a product before it is produced allows you to expand on the scope of employees. Redlining functions supports the digital processing and change process of original files. You make the remarks and comments that you create for the original files available to all partners of the business process.

• The Engineering Workbench exists for data maintenance. This is an extensive tool for the integrated processing of BOM items, operations, PRTs and additional product and process data. In order to restrict the data for the current task, you define specific working areas, such as for engineering/design or production.