Designing a customizable product lifecycle management system for an SME to reach data singularity

A product life cycle management system (PLM) is a collaborative tool that allows companies to organize and manage the entire lifecycle of a produced product. In most of the cases it is referred to as the central system where all product-related data is aggregated and agreed among all stakeholders that take interest in the product development process. The PLM core activities are strictly related to data management and are assuring product data singularity in an industrial environment. In this case the industrial context is represented by a manufacturing company from the Netherlands. The main problem of most SMEs is that of capturing the essence of product related data and creating a digital version of it with the scope of constantly improving and optimizing products. This problem is emerging due to the use of multiple systems that capture parts of the product data, thus it results in scattered product-related data across multiple systems. This implies that companies are not able to analyze potential problems that might appear during the lifecycle of a product, or optimize existing products. Through the present work, the intention is to continue the digitization roadmap of the manufacturing company by continuing the research into the PLM spectrum. The final objective is of designing a customizable PLM interface that suits the needs of the company and its industry.