ANN ARBOR, MI — The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences published a report featuring analysis for successful digital product lifecycle management implementation, covering insight from years of collaborating with government and industry partners to determine a more cost-effective way to launch specific PLM processes, which can enable small- and medium-sized companies to make the leap. The nonprofit manufacturing consortium has developed a commercial off-the-shelf solution: PLM-in-a-Box–Early Acquisition Edition, which focuses on the needs of the government partners.

Through a series of test projects, NCMS has worked with government partners who wanted their logistics and engineering communities to have a standardized, integrated method of accessing product lifecycle information for their larger assets. They wanted to focus on developing a PLM solution that could manage configuration control and synchronize successive changes in PLI.

The method of introducing a PLM system has been demonstrated to improve upstream acquisition activities and downstream sustainment engineering processes, which have resulted in improved supply chain and maintenance customer support. The test projects showed introducing a PLM gradually is a cost-effective way to begin gaining the advantages of a digital PLM system.  

“Significant work is being done by industry, the government and NCMS to create and improve technological advances,” said Pam Hurt, vice president for Business Capture, Communications and Partnership, NCMS. “Making these advances visible and available to a wider audience is the purpose of the NCMS Technology Brief series. Our hope is collectively we can build on what has already been accomplished, strengthen the US manufacturing industry and continue to successfully compete globally.”

To read the document, visit https://www.ncms.org/evolving-strategies-for-initiating-product-lifecycle-management-.