Product Lifecycle Management: Paradigm for 21st Century Product Realisation

Rating:
Summary: Best of Breed PLM book
Review: I bought this book approximately one month ago. I hesitated because of the price, but finally took the plunge and dived in. Now I recommend it to everyone involved in Product Lifecycle Management. It changed how I saw PLM. If you're in PLM, then it's the book for you. It's good for PLM people whoever they are, users, managers, vendors, integrators, universities, students. It's more than 400 pages long and I consider there's not a page which isn't great value. What is so great? To start with the book is well-structured, readable, and full of useful information, experience and wisdom. There are all kinds of various sections and lists to help you to understand why PLM is necessary, what it includes, its components, examples in various industries, characteristics of a PLM project manager, systems and vendors, why PLM appeals to different managers, and so on.

The first few chapters contain foundation material about lifecycles, products, product data, processes, trends, developments, and are good and useful and could make a book in themselves, but that's just the beginning. Then the book moves on, and linked subjects such as engineering change management, enterprise change management, product liability, patents, intellectual property, lifecycle analysis, sustainable development, re-use, recycling, traceability, and so on, are brought in, and you start to see PLM in a new manner. Another theme in the book is PLM implementation. Along the implementation path there are many intermediate steps, and the book shows how to strategize, plan and implement them, and how to justify the all-important component of Product Data Management. Direct and indirect benefits, NPV and ROI are all covered in detail. A PDM maturity model shows typical steps and related achievements. The books loaded with great examples. It finishes with a great set of presentation slides you can use for your project team or manager today.

I personally appreciate it's not a book just about PLM systems, but on how organizations will manage products across their lifecycles from cradle to grave. The book looks at PLM from different views. It encourages you to think. It encourages you to think of the past, the present and the future. It describes the reality of a product development and manufacturing company. After a while, you begin to wonder how the author can understand so much about your enterprise without having seen it. As his view of the present situation conforms so closely to reality, his vision of the future of PLM is worth reading. The book gets you thinking about the future role of PLM. Eventually the author sees two principal fields of focus for manufacturing companies. These are the enterprise and the product, with ERP controlling one and PLM the other. PLM will give better control of the products, and make it possible for products to benefit the manufacturer and the customer without destroying the planet's environment. PLM will become just as necessary as ERP, which is why I recommend this book to a very wide audience.

A really useful, thoughtful book parts of which I've already read 3 or 4 times.

Rating:
Summary: Product Lifeycycle Management. Great new concept.
Review: I guess this book is of no interest to the general public, but a must-have for its target niche, folks managing products at whatever time, whether its products as ideas, product development, product realization, product support, product use, product retirement. The author reckons industry must now, twenty-first century, manage products in a joined-up way across the lifecycle from cradle to grave, else with high global competition and reduced timecycles, more and more stuff will fall through the cracks, products will fail, customers will complain and sue, managers and corporations will suffer. The author gives plenty examples of products misbehaving and problem sources like department walls, data silos, functional misinterfaces, unclear responsibility for a product across the lifecycle, customer input twisted, field feedback ignored, out-o-date standards, sales and engineering with different specs. Sure, we all know the problems. Whats new? First book I've read where the author goes beyond citing the problems and the business drivers, and comes up with a coherent solution. With Product Lifecycle Management you organize your processes, people, data, folks and systems so you can manage the product across the lifecycle from cradle to grave and be in control. Sounds simple, great concept. Implementing it should keep us busy the next 20 years

Rating:
Summary: At last a great book about PLM
Review: I like this book, it explains PLM well. It needed to be written. A lot had been said about PLM, but nothing authoritative put on paper. But its a long book with over 400 pages and for me it would have been even better with some clear break points. So let me propose some break points for you when you're reading it.

I propose you read it in three parts. The first part would be Chapters 1 to 6, Chapter 9 and Chapters 31 and 32 which would be about about 120 pages long. These chapters make a great introduction, description and justification of PLM. As the title has it, PLM is a new paradigm. These chapters cover the PLM paradigm, which makes sense, but because it is different from the previous view, has a lot of description and examples. This is useful to anyone involved with PLM. Its excellent, innovative and visionary.

Part 2 is the Chapters from 10 to 21. That's about 100 pages of description of how to prepare for PLM. They cover a lot of ground. The end result from these chapters is the PLM plan. They start from not having a PLM solution or strategy, just the need to do PLM. They'd be useful to anyone developing a PLM strategy/plan. Very good to read, and would help you run a company's PLM initiative.

Part 3 for me is the 150 pages or so starting with Chapter 22 and going up to Chapter 30 with a description of how to implement a component of PLM. The implementation of PDM is described. This is life in the trenches compared to Part 2 strategizing. Specific to PDM, but a lot such as financial justification would be similar for other components. Good for the PDM trenches.

Overall, a book I recommend.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of good text, bad presentation
Review: I'm very interested in PLM related issues and PLM as a concept has become essential for the company I work for. When I opened this book and tried to read it I became a little exhausted - more than 400 pages with no pictures or figures or charts - only text and pages of various kind of detailed lists. I wonder who are the ones in the core interest group of this book? Certainly not business readers, I personally don't have enough time to or effort to go this through even though I'm very sure that all PLM issues are in place and explained in great detail. From my perspective this is not something to read in a plane.


Rating:
Summary: A goldmine
Review: This is a goldmine of high-value material with rich veins of knowledge and experience. It will be highly valued by readers in the Manufacturing sector handling the complexity of developing, supporting and managing products in the global economy.

Nuggets like the PLM paradigm lie on the surface. More highgrade material lies under the surface with even a 30 slide appendix to save you days of work.

Space shuttles, tires, SUV's, drug products, elevators, with collaboratively-developed, globally-used products the need for Product Lifecycle Management is omnipresent. Unless PLM is implemented expect even more problem products. But implementation will take more than management presentations of cool and colorful Powerpoint slides. PLM is a new way of thinking, flying in the face of century-old thinking, and isn't so easy to take aboard.

This is a profound book building the foundations of a new paradigm for product development, realization, use, management. Reading it is an enrichening experience.