White Paper

Part 2: Defining PLM – Critical “must have” capabilities

THE KEY CAPABILITIES OF A PRODUCT LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT NEEDED FOR A BEST-IN-CLASS SOLUTION

Abstract

Over the past ten years, more and more discrete manufacturers have deployed
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions to optimize product development
and enhance bottom-line performance. Paradoxically, however, there is still wide-
spread confusion and disagreement concerning the essential capabilities and func-
tionality of PLM. Ultimately, PLM’s potential as a game-changing technology will
never be fully realized until a single, comprehensive definition of PLM is formu-
lated and universally accepted. The fact is, manufacturers will be able to experi-
ence the complete range of PLM’s benefits – and choose the best PLM solution –
only when they fully and implicitly understand what PLM is, and what it can (and
should) do for them.

In this second of a three-part series of papers, PTC provides a definition of the

seven “must-have” capability components of PLM and the related benefits that can
be achieved by implementing them.

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The seven “must-have” capabilities of PLM

Although the definition of PLM may still be somewhat murky
ten years after the term was first coined, today there’s no
doubt about the exact components that make up a successful
PLM solution. Without exception, there are seven capabilities
that are mandatory if a PLM implementation is to deliver ex-
pected results. Any PLM software that lacks even one of these
capabilities should immediately be questioned as a viable
alternative. The table that follows identifies the seven “must-
have” capabilities as well as the “extended-capability” compo-
nents covered in more detail in part three paper of this series.

PLM SOLUTION CAPABILITIES Must-have capability Extended capability

Document Management •
Embedded Visualization •
Workflow •
Distributed Collaboration •
Multi-CAD data management •
Complete BOM management (i.e., combined MCAD,
ECAD software content in a single product structure) •
Change and Configuration Management •
Manufacturing Process Management (MPM) •
Requirements Management •
Program Portfolio Management (PPM) •
Quality Lifecycle Management (QLM) •
Product Analytics •
Component and Supplier Management (CSM) •
Service Information •
Communities of Practice •
Table 1. Each of the seven highlighted “must-have” capabilities will be discussed
in more detail in this paper.

A note on definition “validation”

The PLM market is currently in a state of transition – one in which the capabilities and characteristics
considered essential in a PLM solution are being reevaluated, yielding some results that are already
apparent. For example, two major PLM vendors – recognizing the importance of database consolida-
tion and a single architecture platform – are evolving their offerings accordingly. Developments like
these seemingly serve as third-party validation of PTC’s PLM definition.

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PLM capability #1: Document Management
Information is the lifeblood of manufacturing. Internal and
external stakeholders rely on accurate information to achieve
everything from design integrity and regulatory compliance to
global product availability and sustained customer satisfaction.
As such, effective Document Management – including the abil-
ity to manage complex information relationships, track data
changes, and ensure documentation quality – is critical.
As a “must-have” PLM component, Document Management
provides the capabilities to store, track, control, and share
information – whether represented as drawings, graphics, or
text – and deliver it as final documentation in any format, such
as downloadable designs and manufacturing specifications,
printed product guides, web-based training manuals, and in-
teractive service information.
Document Management technology within a PLM solution en-
ables stakeholders to:
• Quickly and easily search/retrieve critical, up-to-date
product information electronically via a centrally located
data repository; by applying multiple taxonomies or
categorizations, information can be stored in a single
instance and referenced in a multitude of ways
• Achieve better control of document distribution;
information-profiling enables automatic notification when
desired information is located, and provides access to
authorized users only
• Improve security and disaster-recovery operations;
central-system storage with backup and archiving
functionality protects information from inappropriate user
access or disaster-induced damage
• Enhance regulatory compliance; security controls, audit
trails, archiving functionality, and disaster-recovery
operations ensure that the authenticity of stored
information can be verified and validated to meet
government- and industry-based requirements
PLM capability #2: Embedded Visualization
Effective management and evolution of a product’s BOM
throughout its lifecycle requires that design-related content al-
ways be readily accessible. Since cost and time-to-market are
largely determined relatively early in the product development
process, it’s vital that digital product representations and data
be reviewed and approved by all stakeholders before com-
mitting to prototype development or manufacturing. To make
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this happen, PLM solutions must provide generous visualiza-
tion capabilities that enable collaboration on a multitude of
centrally organized product information types (e.g., CAD files,
PDFs, and MS Office® documents) across both mechanical
and electrical disciplines.
Embedded Visualization capabilities must allow all stakehold-
ers to easily access digital product content – without requiring
the native authoring application. An underlying, web-based,
scalable environment must support a range of customer
needs, spanning simple desktop viewing of single CAD mod-
els to interactive evaluation of massive digital mockups. In ad-
dition, visualization capabilities must enable stakeholders to
mark up the content and collaborate on it in real time, as well
as accurately measure, section and compare 3D models, and
assemble parts and complex product structures.
By sharing visual information throughout the enterprise and
leveraging it in these ways, stakeholders can gain insights that
foster earlier, more effective decision-making – for improved
organizational productivity and reduced process cycle times.
A comprehensive PLM solution must include embedded visual-
ization software capabilities that allow you to:
• Provide product information-access to all team members –
in an accurate, high-performance, ultra-scalable format
• View a myriad of product data (e.g., MCAD/ECAD files,
PDF documents) without requiring the viewer to install the
native authoring application that created the data
• Accurately measure, section, and compare 3D models,
and assemble parts and complex product structures
• Create and deploy interactive assembly and disassembly
sequences
• Create and deploy interactive animations, perform
rapid interface-checking, create kinematic mechanisms,
compute motion envelopes, and output movies
• Methodically step through changes made either between
ECAD designs or across ECAD and MCAD designs
• Conduct real-time design collaboration, analysis and
simulation, regardless of location
• Improve productivity and reduce cycle time by allowing
users – across the enterprise – to share visual information,
gain insight, and make better decisions faster
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PLM capability #3: Workflow
According to the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC),
workflow, by definition, is the computerized facilitation or
automation of a business process in whole or in part. Used
to manage both manual and automated tasks – as well as to
drive and maintain content through its lifecycle – workflow sys-
tems determine and prescribe who does what task and when.
With a tightly managed workflow, organizations can experi-
ence:
• Increased productivity and reduced time-to-market, by
incorporating standardized work practices – a prerequisite
to process automation – and minimizing efforts associated
with work distribution
• Decreased costs, by eliminating routing expenses; by
optimizing workload distribution among resources; by
minimizing the need for management supervision; and by
reducing the demands on project leaders
• Improved quality, by ensuring all required task-related
steps are taken; by eliminating “rush project” orientation
and practices that compromise product integrity; and
by incorporating process monitoring for closed-loop
feedback that captures metrics, identifies bottlenecks, and
fixes problems
As a mandatory component of a complete PLM software solu-
tion, workflow technology provides a web-based automation
platform that helps manufacturers to:
• Optimize task assignment and delegation in ways
conducive to product excellence and streamlined task
completion
• Minimize labor-related inefficiencies, and eliminate
errors by synchronizing the commencement of tasks with
workflow status, such as conducting the final review of a
service manual only when “triggered” to do so by a part
release “event”
• Manage changes to existing content and publish updates
that incorporate those changes
• Automate evaluation and commercialization of new ideas
• Ensure compliance with approval processes and quality-
control standards
• Automate both publishing of content and its routing to all
relevant decision-makers for review and approval
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PLM capability #4: Distributed Collaboration
If you’re like many of today’s manufacturers, not only are your
customers and competitors located worldwide, but so, too, are
your employees, suppliers, contractors and partners. While
the emergence of such widely dispersed product stakeholders
naturally raises a host of communication- and process-related
concerns, the phenomenon, in fact, creates far more opportu-
nities than challenges.
For instance, by successfully executing a Global Product De-
velopment (GPD) strategy – the foundation of which is Dis-
tributed Collaboration – manufacturers are able to accelerate
time-to-market, while reducing product development costs,
enhancing product quality, driving innovation, easing entry
into new markets, and streamlining business operations.
Accordingly, the ideal PLM software will enable geographically
distributed individuals and groups to work collaboratively on
the same products and product development processes. Such
distributed collaboration must include the capabilities to:
• Enable concurrent work on separate design elements and
synchronize those collective efforts through appropriate
product architecting
• Ensure that information flows smoothly to all design
stakeholders through a seamless, integrated data-sharing
source
• Ensure that the security of proprietary information is
preserved through intellectual property (IP) protection
controls
• Improve visibility into program status through standardiza-
tion of program management processes and establish-
ment of key performance metrics
• Ensure all changes are shared expeditiously with affected
stakeholders through a standardized, automated change
process
• Enable fast, global access to the most current product
data through a distributed server network
PLM capability #5: Multi-CAD data management
The ultimate goal of product development is to manage all
CAD data, so the design team can generate a single, accurate
product definition – a single source of truth – that can be con-
fidently released to manufacturing. However, today’s product
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development environments often involve multiple CAD appli-
cations, spanning both electrical and mechanical design dis-
cipline tools. This multi-CAD phenomenon is due to a variety
of factors, such as design outsourcing, companies acquiring
legacy CAD systems through mergers and acquisitions, or de-
signers insisting on maintaining preferred tools for specific el-
ements of a product structure (e.g., one preferred design tool
for an automotive chassis and a different preferred tool for
the power train assembly).
“Otis needed a PLM system that would give all
our product stakeholders the ability to access,
work on and share the most updated informa-
tion on our extensive product lines. Windchill
provides the flexibility and broad capabilities we
need to manage heterogeneous CAD data, im-
prove concurrent engineering worldwide, and
streamline data delivery to our manufacturing
sites in a global development environment.”
– Tom Saxe, Vice President Worldwide Engineering,
Otis Elevator Company
Managing such multi-CAD environments can be difficult – par-
ticularly when distributed work groups are designing complex
products. What’s more, attempting to resolve these challeng-
es, using methods like manual synchronization of disparate
CAD applications, often adversely affects data integrity and
cycle times.
To prevent such occurrences, PLM solutions must provide ca-
pabilities for easy Multi-CAD Data Management. Ideally, man-
ufacturers need a unified database framework for accessing,
loading and designing with heterogeneous CAD content, so
dependent relationships can be accurately managed in the
evolution of an integrated BOM. This framework would also
facilitate synchronization of ongoing design changes across
varying CAD systems – thereby maximizing a manufacturer’s
investment in disparate or legacy CAD tools. In its most ef-
ficient form, a multi-CAD data environment would enable de-
signers to identify and use components from one CAD tool to
provide contextual design in another CAD tool.
In short, heterogeneous CAD data management can ensure
high-quality, single-product definitions, faster collaborative
development, and fewer data management errors.
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To deliver maximum benefit in a multi-CAD environment, PLM
software should, from a single system, enable:
• A complete digital product definition to be developed
using multiple CAD systems
• Easy search, retrieval, assembly and delivery of
heterogeneous data to design teams throughout the
lifecycle
• Engineers to collaborate seamlessly with familiar
development tools, using the correct version of data to
accelerate the overall product definition
• Secure, scalable, collaborative visualization of multi-CAD
product data for continuous feedback to enable efficient
design review preparation, execution and follow up
• Dynamic access to – as well as reuse and synchronization
of – cross-discipline design data across CAD systems to
efficiently and accurately advance the overall design
• Automated synchronization across MCAD systems, so
source information in one CAD system can be easily
reused in another
• A data management and collaboration environment for
the exchange of incremental design changes between
electrical and mechanical domains
PLM capability #6: complete BOM management
Products being manufactured today incorporate more ad-
vanced electronics and software technology – in more complex
and smaller mechanical packages – than ever before. Conse-
quently, facilitating electromechanical product development
requires that manufacturers successfully manage and inte-
grate their electrical, mechanical and software design devel-
opment data and teams – an environment known in certain
industries as mechatronics.
This process can be a complex undertaking, however, as more
and more manufacturers are now managing geographically
dispersed team members working across different languages
and cultures and using a myriad of tools and applications.
What’s more, traditional technologies do not facilitate effec-
tive collaboration across the electrical and mechanical en-
gineering silos. Failure to resolve these issues can result in a
host of difficult issues, including lengthy review cycles, ram-
pant miscommunication, productivity-sapping rework, delayed
product launches, and expensive product recalls.
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To be capable of combining ECAD, MCAD and software do-
mains in a single product structure – as well as synchronizing
the concurrent development of the associated designs, so that
there is successful management and evolution of the entire
product definition (i.e., the product’s BOM) across all disci-
plines, manufacturers require Complete BOM Management
capabilities. PLM software, therefore, must have all these ca-
pabilities in order to improve electromechanical design re-
use, identify potential problems early, minimize downstream
changes, reduce product costs, enhance product quality, and
accelerate time-to-market.
“Rather than being dependent on the PCB de-
signers to locate components and nets, electri-
cal engineers and others can now easily find any
item. This means that they can complete much
of the review process on their own, leaving the
more critical and complicated jobs for the review
meeting. The time required for review of a new
layout has been reduced from several days to a
few hours.”
– Kathleen Walsh, Powertrain Core Electronics Design,
Visteon Corp.
As a critical component of PLM software, complete BOM man-
agement helps manufacturing organizations:
• Streamline electromechanical design collaboration pro-
cesses, thus reducing time-to-market and decreasing cost
• Give mechanical engineers better insight into the potential
impact of changes on electrical designs and software
code – before the changes are proposed
• Track and manage what versions of the software are
associated with what versions of the product
• Provide a consistent communication methodology of
changes across disciplines – enabling mechanical, elec-
trical and software engineers to communicate more
frequently, with less disruption
• Save cycle time by enabling concurrent development of
the mBOM while the eBOM is being developed in the
design phase
• Enhance traceability of the design IP and software
configuration for knowledge capture and reuse
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PLM capability #7: Change and Configuration
Management
Just as change is inevitable in the product development pro-
cess – whether driven by evolving customer requirements, new
market opportunities, technological innovation, cost-saving
measures, or updated compliance regulations – so, too, is the
need to manage it. Given the serious consequences of poor
change management practices, including everything from sky-
rocketing redesign costs to impaired product quality – as well
as such sobering analyst observations as “An efficient change
process can cut up to 33% off of the typical product develop-
ment cycle time”5 – the vital importance of change and config-
uration management is readily apparent.
The goal of Change and Configuration Management is to
provide a well-defined, orderly process that controls how in-
formal and formal changes to product configurations are
proposed, analyzed, planned, implemented and released. By
ensuring that changes are effectively communicated, tracked
and documented from product conception through retire-
ment – and thereby enabling stakeholders to instantly access
all necessary data and assess impacts of proposed changes –
such a process minimizes repetition of mistakes, synchroniz-
es engineering and manufacturing BOMs, and coordinates
multi-disciplinary content. Ultimately, typical benefits include
greater “purity” of product definitions, improved decision-
making, heightened innovation, and significantly enhanced
productivity.
“An efficient change process can cut up to 33% of
the typical product development cycle time.“4
It’s imperative that your PLM software provides change and
configuration management capabilities that enable manufac-
turers to:
• Capture digital data content in a single, secure
environment – in effect, creating a “single source of
truth” for all product information – so that any updates,
upgrades, or milestones in a product’s configuration (i.e.,
any evolution of the complete product definition) can be
systematically managed and traced over time
• Structure a standardized, repeatable and automated
process that facilitates rapid and accurate communication
of changes – regardless of their level of complexity
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• Make evolving product configurations and data
seamlessly accessible to internal stakeholders across all
disciplines, so that changes can be tightly synchronized
and accurately captured in an integrated BOM, for rapid
dissemination throughout the enterprise
For more on the definitions and benefits of the capabilities
that make up a complete PLM solution, we invite you to read:
Part 1: Defining PLM–Executive overview and
Part 3: Defining PLM–Extended capabilities

• Engage external parties, including suppliers, partners Visit PTC.com/solutions/product-lifecycle-management to

and customers, such that they can interact with updated
product information – and seamlessly communicate
changes – in strict accordance with accessibility
parameters dictated by the level of their relationship (e.g.,
a strategic partner versus a one-time parts supplier)
• Tightly align manufacturing process planning with
engineering design changes, for earlier involvement – and
greater integration – of manufacturing stakeholders in the
change process, as well as more synchronized eBOM /
mBOM development
learn more about the promise of PLM.
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herein is furnished for informational use only and is subject to change without notice. The
only warranties for PTC products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements
accompanying such products and services and nothing herein should be construed as con-
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Conclusion 5896B-Defining PLM: Part 2-WP-EN-1110

To date, PLM has delivered significant inroads in the discrete

manufacturing industry. Numerous manufacturers have al-
ready experienced some of the ways PLM can enhance prod-
uct development processes – and scores of others are seeking
a better appreciation of the technology to discover how they,
too, can benefit.

However, if manufacturers are to tap the full potential of PLM,

they first need to explicitly understand its value proposition. Af-
ter all, manufacturers can’t know what to expect – and what to
demand – from PLM unless they know what’s possible.

This paper is part two of a three-part series where we explore

PLM. In this paper we sought to provide insight and a clear
explanation of the seven critical capabilities that are required
within best-in-class PLM software. Armed with this knowledge,
manufacturers will be better prepared to make purchase deci-
sions that maximize their returns on PLM investments, increase
their process efficiencies, and ultimately enhance their bot-
tom-line results.

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