In industry and commerce, Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire life cycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal. PLM integrates people, data, processes and business systems and provides a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprise.

 

'Product Life Cycle Management' (PLM) should be distinguished from 'Product Life Cycle Management (marketing)' (PLCM). PLM describes the engineering aspect of a product, from managing descriptions and properties of a product through its development and useful life; whereas, PLCM refers to the commercial management of life of a product in the business market with respect to costs and sales measures.

 

Product Life Cycle Management is one of the four cornerstones of a corporation's information technology structure. All companies need to manage communications and information with their customers (CRM-Customer Relationship Management), their suppliers (SCM-Supply Chain Management), their resources within the enterprise (ERP-Enterprise Resource Planning) and their planning (SDLC-Systems Development Life Cycle). In addition, manufacturing engineering companies must also develop, describe, manage and communicate information about their products.

 

A form of PLM called people-centric PLM. While traditional PLM tools have been deployed only on release or during the release phase, people-centric PLM targets the design phase