“Tens of thousands of students worldwide are learning to use Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) but, unfortunately, mostly in the form of the key PLM components computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE). We say “unfortunately” because a major opportunity is being missed, a way to make large enterprises and their business units work as smoothly as a well-run job shop.
In such a shop, perhaps idealized here, information in many forms is readily shared—digital data, domain knowledge, lessons learned, best practices, and so on. As organizations expand, this sharing falls victim to incompatible data formats, silos of (domain) expertise, shop floor tribal knowledge, and obsolete systems.
Among the inevitable consequences are bad decisions, missed deadlines, and busted budgets. We're not just talking scrap and rework here. A solution is readily available and it is PLM but only if approached holistically and implemented at the enterprise level, and not just in engineering…”