What is SAP PLM? (Product Lifecycle Management)

During the development process, a product goes through different stages such as planning, design and engineering, manufacturing, transportation, service and disposal/recycle.

If it is a digital product, then the stages will be bit different, like, requirement analysis, design, develop, test, launch, upgrade.

Whether it is a physical product or a digital product, organisations require efficient process and tools to successfully manage each and every phase of a product’s lifecycle. So that they can streamline the production process and reduce the production cost.

SAP PLM stands for Product Lifecycle Management and it is used by big organisations around the world to manage development lifecycle of both physical and digital products. It has got capabilities to manage product development projects, product costing, product engineering, product development and much more.

SAP PLM is available in different version. The one that is part of business suite of solutions, is based on the NetWeaver technology and can run on any database. Whereas the latest PLM capabilities are available as part of the S/4HANA application and runs only on the HANA database. It can be hosted as both, on-premise and cloud.

Capabilities of PLM:

• Portfolio and project management – Supports product development processes, project tasks, proposals, timelines, commercial project management, project network, etc.
• Product costing – Determine product costing and simulation taking various aspects into consideration, pricing features, best target price and profitability prediction.
• Product engineering – Collaborate with multiple teams to produce a product. Provide secure and easy access to all product development information.
• Product development – PLM offers a 3D viewer to help engineers get a visual simulation of their product development. It can be integrated with design software like CAD to assist the development process.
• Product compliance – Depending on the type of products you manufacture and type of industry/customers you serve, there are a variety of regulations which your product must fulfil. PLM offers capabilities to centrally manage product compliance regulations, registrations, classifications, labels and documents.
• Integration – SAP PLM can be integrated with other SAP applications such as ECC (finance and master data), CRM (customer information), SRM(supplier and raw materials information), SCM (supply chain and transportation) and BI (analytics) to perform the end to end manufacturing business process.

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