INTRODUCTION


Product lifecycle management (PLM) software got its start in the 1980s, around the same time as the SUV, a now popular three letter acronym for the sport utility vehicle. In 1985, the American Motors Corporation (AMC) was developing the Jeep Grand Cherokee. The company was looking for a way to compete with larger automakers, and its solution was to go digital. AMC invested in Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA computer-aided design (CAD) package, a move which allowed AMC’s engineers to ditch their drafting tables in favor of computers. 

CAD was just the beginning. Soon, AMC had installed a system that served as a central database for all of the Jeep design documents. With this, the company’s ability to collaborate greatly improved.

“It helped with communication,” commented François Castaing, AMC’s head of engineering in 1985. “Conflicts were resolved faster. Engineering changes were reduced.”

The interplay between CATIA and AMC’s central product database was an early form of product data management (PDM), a central subset of PLM. As the company further iterated on what Castaing called their “data pipeline,” the benefits of PLM became more and more apparent. In 1987, AMC was bought by Chrysler, and the larger automaker made full use of AMC’s pioneering approach to automobile development.

“Chrysler had moved from just connecting product designers to connecting everyone involved in designing and building the product,” reflected Castaing, who remained head of engineering at Chrysler after the acquisition. So successful was Chrysler’s use of PLM that, according to Castaing, the automaker’s development costs were half those of the industry average by the mid 90s. Its competitors had yet to modernize their own processes with a PLM strategy.

“When I think of PLM, I think of a string,” explained Mohit Daga, Senior Product Portfolio Manager at SOLIDWORKS. “It can stretch from evaluating an idea in the inception phase to connecting the big ecosystem of stakeholders that are needed to realize the idea, from generation through to production and manufacturing and then completing it through the lifecycle.”

Today, PLM is standard in many organizations, including the entirety of the automotive industry. Large automakers as well as their organizations rely on it, as do many small and medium enterprises dealing in product development. All enjoy the benefits of the “string” connecting the product from birth to death, but each uses PLM in the way best suited to them. “The string can be stretched depending on how you want to use it,” Daga continued. “And different companies use it in different ways.”

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Why PLM Users Should Embrace the Cloud

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