Product Lifecycle Management refers to the process of management of lifecycle of a product. The process starts from the conceptualization of the product to its design, manufacturing, service and delivery. SAP Product Lifecycle Management helps in creation and development of new products that can work as per market's needs, and also help in optimizing the developing processes and systems. The process of PLM integrates data, processes, people and businesses to provide information from different sources, which can be used by the companies and their partners. The application provides solution to speed up product manufacturing and to ensure working as per the industry or regulatory standards.
It supports business processes such as product management, product development and collaboration, product data management and lifecycle management. It helps in proper decision making to provide corporate growth strategies which are supported by the product.
Conceive (specification and concept of product) - In this process the product specifications are defined based on the requirements of a customer, market needs and other regulatory bodies. The technical parameters are defined in the initial phase.
Design - In the design phase the product formation starts, the prototype is designed and tested and a pilot release is conducted before actual product launch. In this phase redesigning and improvements in product is also suggested.
Manufacturing - After finalizing the design the manufacturing process starts.
Service, support, maintain and disposal - The last phase of PLM are service, repair, maintenance and disposal of the product.
provides product management, development and collaboration, data management and lifecycle management.
Product management - In this phase product strategy and planning, portfolio management, innovation management, requirement management and market launch are included.
Design - In the second phase engineering, procurement, manufacturing, service, quality, maintenance and change management is done.
Project data management - It includes data integration across product masters, structures, specifications, service and data visualization/publication.
Lifecycle management - In the module the features such as product compliance, supports, costing, tools, resource management and documentations is stored.
1. The application can be used to achieve the short-term and long-term goals.
2. It provides easy interfacing with the supplier relationship management.
3. It reduces effort on marketing and cost on prototyping.
4. It can provide some documents such as the Request for Quote on time without much effort and it can immediately identify the sales opportunities which improve revenue generation capability of an organization. It can provide records of a product to contract manufacturers which eases the process of manufacturing and it promotes re-use of data stored at one place.
5. It reduces duplicate storage and provides a framework for product optimization.
6. It provides role specific access for internal and external users, and provides relevant information, services and tools.
7. It allows improved decision making and insight into projects, reporting, portfolio management, product safety, health and quality.
8. It increases operative and strategic control by monitoring production changes which affects timelines, resources and costs.
9. PLM processes do not store the application software; in fact, it can provide the information related to business complexities and also provides fast rate of change.
