Expert Opinion

Larry Combs writing for Industrial Management magazine [1] cites the University of Michigan's PLM Development Consortium definition of PLM i.e. "PLM is an integrated, information-driven approach to all aspects of a product's life - from design inception through manufacture, deployment, and maintenance, culminating in its removal from service and its final disposal."
The following chart depicts a general view of product lifecycle stages.

Product Lifecycle Stages

Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) is a management philosophy which encompasses all matters connected with the life span of products and services. A lifecycle management perspective begins at the product design stages and carries through to the retirement, disposal or recycling stages. The following list is adapted from work done by Professor James Martin of the University of South Florida [2] and outlines some of the key components involved in a lifecycle management approach to new product development:

• Recognition that maximising revenues, and minimising of costs, at each development stage of a product's life cycle may not actually maximise profits.

• Consideration of far-reaching perspectives which lead to superior long term results.

• Recognition that low consumption costs must be designed into products.

• An emphasis on the design of products having:
• Lower fabrication and assembly costs,
• Reduced numbers of parts,
• More moulded and snap together parts, and
• Common and interchangeable parts.

• An emphasis on lower logistical support costs e.g. storage of finished goods, delivery of products, installation, and training costs.

Tony Hakola, director of technical marketing and Michael Horning senior applications engineer for U.S. Enovia Corp states [3] that PLM is far more than a product design methodology, and that PLM can appropriately be described as a strategy for enabling organisations to become more innovative and productive through the application of a range of technologies. Sophisticated computer driven PLM tools enable manufacturing companies to capture, use, and exploit the intellectual property created by design and manufacturing engineers, and to carry this from the product's concept stages through to the very end of its life. PLM technologies can be used to:

• Capitalise on design data and to make it more available for collaboration across extended enterprises;

• Bring together engineers from design, manufacturing, and maintenance disciplines;

• Coordinate non-engineering personnel and departments for managing material requirements, cost, sales and marketing, and finally extending through to include manufacturing.

Hence PLM can become a total strategy for enabling organisations to remain competitive in rapidly growing economies.

Citing Dr Tom Shelly (2004) writing for U.K. Manufacturing Computer Solutions, PLM involves managing the whole process, from adopting the most promising concepts, to design (which focuses upon needs, effectiveness and profitability throughout the product's life) through to construction, maintenance and ultimately, disposal. Ever-reducing product life cycle times that are currently facing industry are forcing the need for greater collaboration between all parties involved across the supply chain. The need to provide for opportunities to upgrade, or to update, products throughout their lifetimes is also becoming a necessity .

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA)

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a technique used for assessing the environmental factors connected with a product over its life-cycle and should be a component of PLM. LCA is defined as the science of studying and measuring the toxicological aspects of products and the effect of these on the surrounding environment. The process generally has two main applications:

• Analysis of the various contributions to the "environmental load" associated with each life-cycle stage of a given product.

• The preparation of comparison data relating to similar products which organisations can publish both internally and externally.

The application of LCA continues to grow as governments and customers increasingly expect manufactures and distributors to show careful attention to the environmental properties of their products. Consultants Mark Goedkoop and Michiel Oele [5] describe the following five stages of LCA as recommended by the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) code of practice:

• Planning
• Statement of objectives
• Definition of the product and its alternatives
• Choice of system boundaries
• Choice of environmental parameters
• Choice of aggregation and evaluation method
• Strategy for data collection

• Screening
• Preliminary execution of the LCA
• Adjustment of plan

• Data collection and data treatment
• Measurements, interviews, literature search, theoretical calculations, database search, qualified guessing
• Computation of the inventory table

• Improvement assessment
• Sensitivity analysis
• Improvement priority and feasibility assessment

Value Engineering

Value Engineering (VE) is a systematic process used to improve the value of products, projects or systems, and to optimise life cycle costs and as such is a tool to be used within PLM. Value may be defined as the most cost effective way of reliably accomplishing a given function whilst meeting an end user’s needs, desires and expectations. The definition of value may be stated as "Value = Function/Cost," and this forms a key to understanding the principles of value engineering. Hence to improve value involves enhancing functionality, reducing costs, or both. For this reason it is necessary to consider the function of an item, or its purpose, before value improvements are attempted.

VE methodologies may be employed to identify opportunities for removing unnecessary costs and for assuring that quality, reliability, and performance will continue to meet customer expectations. In carrying out VE activities it is common for multidisciplinary teams representing stakeholders (e.g. clients, designers, manufacturers, users, maintainers), and specialists to work together to identify improvements (increased value) in the following areas:

• Function (the specific work that a product must perform)

• Quality (the owner’s or user’s needs) and

• Cost: (the Life Cycle Cost of the product)

The phases included in a typical value engineering "job plan" are outlined in the following table adapted from Davis

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