1. The essential elements of PLM
   1. Product structure (bill of material) management
   2. Central data vault (electronic file repository)
   3. Part and document classification and metadata ("attribute") management
   4. Materials content identification for environmental compliance
   5. Product-focused project task assignment
   6. Workflow and process management for approving changes
   7. Multi-user secured access, including "electronic signature"
   8. Data export for loading downstream ERP systems
2. PLM components and financial benefits
   1. The PLM process manages
      1. Products and parts, including those which are used for tooling, inspection, calibration, training, operation and maintenance
      2. Documents that define the performance, functional and physical attributes of an item.
      3. Ancillary documents that are used for training, operation and maintenance of an item
      4. Electronic computer files that support the product's design, development, production and subsequent post-production phases
      5. Material content, including reporting on legally-proscribed or hazardous substances and the identification of part recycling and disposal methods.
   2. The PLM benefits
      1. Increase sales revenue
         1. Reduce design time
            1. immediate, managed access to all design data
            2. concurrent reviews by affected data consumers without distracting designers
            3. elimination of lost or damaged files
            4. consistent, data-rich bills of materials with real-time cost roll-ups
            5. reapplication of existing items in new designs
            6. time-to-market reductions
         2. Accelerate release and change cycles
            1. reduce average change processing time
            2. reduce average ECO cycle time
      2. Reduce product unit costs
         1. Conduct more comprehensive, less intrusive collaboration
         2. Purchase fewer parts in larger volumes
         3. Increase production experience
         4. Reduce production rework and scrap
      3. Reduce administrative and clerical overhead
         1. Simplify regulatory and contractual compliance
         2. Mitigate and, if required, report on a product's environmental impact
         3. Reduce process administrative and clerical costs
   3. The PLM discipline
      1. The purpose of engineering design activity is to create complete documentation for the manufacture and support of a product throughout its lifecycle.
      2. PLM is a process for ensuring that a product consistently meets the agreed-upon specifications throughout its life.
      3. The PLM effort includes:
         1. identifying, documenting and verifying the functional and physical characteristics of an item
         2. recording how an item is produced
         3. controlling changes to a product and its documentation
         4. providing an audit trail of the decisions that affected the product design.
      4. The PLM process is embodied in rules, procedures, techniques, methodology and resources to ensure that:
         1. Changes that are made to a product's configuration in the course of development, production and operation are beneficial and can be implemented without adverse consequences.
         2. The configuration of a product is documented
         3. Modifications are managed until fully incorporated into production and, if necessary, field items.
3. Evaluating PLM software and adopting a PLM tool
   1. Define your project objectives
      1. Topic
   2. Assess your organization's existing processes for design, data management & change. Your alternatives are to:
      1. Do nothing
         1. You may decide that your processes are sufficient for current business needs; you don't anticipate any worthwhile efficiencies by modifying or automating your existing manual processes.
      2. Adopt PLM without changing your process
         1. This is a reasonable path when you're under significant resource (time, money, staff) constraints, but believe that immediate automation of key areas can provide immediate benefits or can control an on-going problem (such as chronic bill of materials errors or slow change processing). You'll usually be able to tweak a few of your most challenging process pressure points under the flag of "system configuration".
      3. Re-engineer processes without PLM
         1. Another possibility when you don't have the time or budget to do everything, but believe that your processes are too flawed to automate efficiently. This should make a subsequent PLM project much easier to implement.
      4. Re-engineer processes as part of a PLM project
         1. The most challenging approach. You'll need to spend considerable time negotiating cultural changes, specifying PLM business rules and workflows, and trying to reconcile the demands of users who like things just as they are with those users demanding radical change. This approach requires a particularly strong champion with enough political clout to get everyone lined up behind the effort. But it can offer a radical transformation in your organization's efficiency, and the risks may well be worth the rewards.
   3. Set realistic goals
      1. Plan for an incremental & benefits-driven implementation; avoid the "big bang" approach if possible, and capture the quick payback before tackling tougher problems with harder-to-justify ROI
      2. Establish simple, easy-to-track success metrics and make sure that they're directly related to your original objectives
   4. Identify potential expenses and forecast actual costs related to purchase, installation and operation
      1. PLM industry revenue
         1. Topic
      2. Emphasize easy to use software
         1. Ensure that your installation, configuration and training costs are as low as possible by choosing the simplest, most user-friendly software that meets your needs. Most reputable vendors will let you try before you buy.
      3. PLM will be a big win, so don't over-buy
         1. Minimize configuration consulting and custom development work, principally through avoiding enterprise integration projects that yield only minor productivity improvements.
      4. Expenses to explore
         1. Staff time to research & evaluate alternatives
         2. Software solution costs
            1. per-user or concurrent-use client licenses
            2. per-CPU (or other) application license
            3. database license
            4. special administrator licenses
            5. annual maintenance, support, upgrades
         3. Hardware costs
            1. workstations
            2. application and/or database servers
            3. backup devices
         4. Special file viewers
         5. Downstream ERP file import or integration
         6. Network & bandwidth costs
         7. Deployment costs
            1. Consulting services for process reengineering and application configuration
            2. Legacy data import and migration
            3. Pilot (proof of concept)
            4. Production deployment
   5. Review how software licensing can impact your budget and operations
      1. Traditional perpetual license, with annual maintenance
      2. Subscription or lease
      3. Internet ASP-based services
   6. Establish a budget and define expected results (ROI)
      1. Control costs at each stage of the project; savings accrue at each step as you simplify your requirements
      2. If you are having trouble with justifying ROI
         1. Scale back project scope
         2. Look for simpler, more affordable solutions
         3. Lease rather than buy
   7. Determine the selection criteria that you'll use
      1. Focus on your needs, not the supplier's capabilities
      2. Protect yourself from fatal commitments
      3. Generic user interfaces are, well, generic
      4. PLM is great, but don't get in over your head
4. Designing a PLM process
   1. Simple: keep administration, training and operating costs low by
      1. taking full advantage of the automation provided by your PLM solution;
      2. defining PLM system rules that allow users to self-manage their tasks with little clerical support or administrative intervention;
      3. assuming that occasional or new users won't remember complicated rules for creating, finding, and processing items.
   2. Flexible: minimize the amount of work - and rework - that could occur during the PLM system's lifetime (which may be 20 years or more) by
      1. supporting on-demand expansion of part categories, document types, change types, custom attributes and other attributes without requiring an impact assessment;
      2. ensuring that the design can support unlimited growth in any area without reworking previously-entered data;
      3. minimizing the chance for conflicting process definitions if the PLM data has to be merged with another PLM system sometime in the future. Ideally, two PLM systems that follow these rules will be simple to merge, with no discussion about which data set requires renumbering.
   3. Proposed Rules
      1. Item identification rules
      2. Revision rules
      3. A minor detour into "revision" versus "version"
      4. Change rules