product lifecycle management

The development of medical high-tech products is associated with high costs for documentation as well as for risk and quality management. In addition, they are subject to tight regulations and licensing procedures. To meet these challenges, the use of new methods and information technology tools is worthwhile, especially in the medical device industry. The product life cycle management approach, which was developed in other industries, offers med-tech companies the potential of being sustainably innovative in the global competition.

Many companies today consider managing and optimizing their product lifecycle information as a key competitive factor. This requires the integration of different domains along the Product Lifecycle in an integrated information model. Today, many Domain integrating IT-Projects, which aim to introduce PLM-Solutions, are managed as there would be classical domain specific IT Products introduced. For the conceptual solution design customers use to consult typical business strategy consultants. For implementation they consult IT-System Supplier Services. The complex domain integrating part is often rationalized away by phrases like loose coupling or service-oriented architecture. In such kind of approach a gap exists which has serious consequences in actual IT-projects. Integration independent of concepts like SOA means that system elements from one Data-Models have to be integrated and persistently linked in Data-Models of other domains. These facts increase the requirements for ...

State of the Art IT-solutions for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM-solutions) offer no support for decision makers in the early phases of product engineering. Their focus is rather on the administration of design data. This article describes a concept for the advancement of PLM-solutions. Existing approaches in Business Information Management are being discussed and extended to allow their application in the PLM-context. Fundamental idea of the described concept is a role, task and process oriented guidance of decision makers. Finally the strategy of realisation is outlined and an outlook on major potentials of realisation is given.

Technical innovations and increasing international stress of competition have lead wordwide operating companies as well as small and medium-sized companies to bring very complex products in a huge number of variants into the market. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is an approach to handle this complexity. In this paper a generic process model for a pragmatic evaluation of PLM solutions in a PLM implementation project is presented. Over the past years large companies, especially in aircraft and automotive industries, have made experiences with PLM and especially PLM implementation which can be adapted directly or indirectly by companies of small and medium sizes.

The start-up of production and logistics equipment in a production system is embedded in a superior start-up management. This has to manage the different types of ramp-ups in a value-added network efficiently regarding to products, processes and equipment. Planning uncertainties and multifaceted faults increase the equipment manufacturer’s cost and effort substantially, often lead to delays, partially to delayed start-ups, and tie the system manufacturer longer than planned on the ground. Due to these reasons, a holistic and integrated start-up management is required. Thus, the start-up process accelerates and the competitiveness of all involved companies improves significantly.

The technical change management poses a particular challenge for the components supplier industry, due to this industry needs to consider a number of internal as well as OEMs’ external requirements concerning the underlying process. Thus a multitude of process sequences develop, which complicate standardisation and computer support. The following article describes a pragmatic method of resolution, which was conceptually designed and implemented within a project of the company KEIPER GmbH & Co. KG and the Chair of Information Technology in Mechanical Engineering (ITM) at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

Preserving and re-using experience and knowledge from employees is a decisive task in industrial engineering. In this context the usage of tools for knowledge management is highly up-to-date, however a concrete implementation starts very unassertively in practise. The article discusses advisability and feasibility of a process-based knowledge management. A method of resolution in form of a knowledge infrastructure is worked out exemplary for the two phases “product planning” and “product design” linking the tools of knowledge management with knowledge-related tasks of the product development process.

The development of the information technology is a pre-condition for a more efficient work in engineering too. In the last few years many tools have been developed which use Argumented Reality. This technology has a great potential in the area of operating and overhaul and of the development of maintenance support systems especially. This publication describes the possibilities of AR and presents a concept of efficient information supply during the maintenance on location. Further are discussed problems of using and development of AR-Systems.

The product engineering is gaining in importance as it is the main source for innovations in manufacturing enterprises. In most cases the necessary ma-nagement and IT approaches are almost underestimated in strategic top-ma-nagement decisions, despite the advancing digitalisation in digital engineering. Product lifecycle management (PLM) has established itself as an integrated ma-nagement approach in engineering, but is often misunderstood as a synonym for PDM and delegated to IT departments. The survey “benefits of PLM” points out the reached benefits and most successful PLM implementation strategies.

“The Digital Factory is no longer a vision, but on the way to reality“, Volkswagen reported on the branch meeting in Ludwigsburg in June 2004. This quote reflects the situation of the Digital Factory in automotive industry in an impressing way. Other branches and enterprise sizes still have to accomplish this step, as an actual study of Fraunhofer IPA shows. Here the question arises how enterprises handle the subject “Introduction of the Digital Factory”. To say it directly - there is no general approach. Depending on the structure of customers and suppliers, the size of enterprise and on the product, individual approaches have to be found and implemented. But what can be pointed out independent of the specific enterprise are the success factors for the introduction of the Digital Factory. This subject is dealt with in the article at hand.