Process Overview: Product Life-Cycle Management

Product life-cycle management (PLM) adoption has steadily progressed in stalwart manufacturing arenas as companies continue to improve the efficiency of and collaboration among their engineering-centric processes. As PLM users seek expanded solution functionality to meet their increasingly complex product innovation requirements, the challenges of implementing end-to-end PLM processes, defined by Forrester as the collaborative management of product information from inception to retirement, is putting pressure on incumbent vendors to upgrade and evolve their capabilities. The evolution of PLM from an engineering-centric app to a complete life-cycle management solution will give rise to new IT software and service vendor ecosystems characterized by strategic partnerships that co-develop and co-market flexible, interoperable solutions.