I’m not much of a baker, but I can follow instructions reasonably well. If I wanted to bake a
cake, I could find a recipe, buy the specified ingredients, mix them together and bake for the recommended period of time. By following a recipe, I would increase the chances that the end result actually looks and tastes like cake! Just as a recipe provides the detailed instructions to make a quality cake, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems provide the information and instructions to design quality products. Whether your company makes medical devices, industrial equipment, laptops, cell phones or other consumer products – PLM provides a secure, centralized database to manage the entire product record into a “Single Record of the Truth”. This ensures you can design and manufacture high quality products and get them to market fast and efficiently.
Agile PLM allows companies to aggregate all the components, documentation, software, engineering drawings and Bill of Material (BOM) into one system. The BOM can be thought of as the product recipe for your finished product. It may include off-the-shelf and custom parts, software and firmware, documentation, and both mechanical and electrical CAD drawings so that every aspect of the product configuration is controlled. Within the BOM view of Agile, users gain immediate insight into whether there are attached documents, pending change orders or quality issues against any level of an assembly. Users may quickly traverse the BOM to view any of the associated records or attachments. User-defined security roles and privileges ensure adherence with corporate security policies, configuration management practices and regulatory compliance initiatives. Internal and external collaboration is enabled to allow individuals, departments and partners the appropriate level of access to product information.
