PROCESS-BASED VIEW OF PRODUCT DATA MANAGEMENT

Many companies consider acquiring a product data management system (PD MS) to reduce the delays and costs caused by inefficient product data management. There are, however, considerable differences between the v arious commercially available PDMSs, starting from the different meani ngs of basic concepts, such as document or document version. Before ev aluating various PDMSs and their features, a company should analyze th e processes in which the PDMS is going to be used. This paper describe s two common processes: the development and delivery processes of conf igurable products. To a large extent product data is expressed as docu ments, and consequently engineering document management is one of the main functions of a PDMS. The rest of the paper discusses general requ irements for document management within a PDMS and the particular requ irements implied by the two process types.