Product Lifecycle Management (ISBN 3540257314)

PLM book review:
This is excellent, seems to me that this is the first time when some one has put all the basics of PLM in one cover. As I see it, the real PLM problem or challenge is really not the PLM software implementation project. The real issue is to know what to implement! The concept of PLM is still much fuzzier than f. ex. the area of ERPs. In my company we discussed for ages about certain details of PLM, its contents and the selecting of the SW vendor. However the real big thing was that there were no clear goals for the whole PLM development project. I think we missed our opportunity here because all the discussions and the definitions of PLM were held in very different levels and everybody had very different understanding of PLM within our organization. We all should have read something like this before we launched our PLM initiative in our company. This book really gives you good and clear view into PLM. I recommend!

Easily earned money ...:
This book is a big disappointment; I am actively working in the PDM/PLM market for over 15 years and I have given many training and educational workshops; I was leading the ESPRIT RapidPDM project. Even though I reviewed the book from an educational perspective, to my opinion the book is nothing more as a summary of topics; the authors have not succeeded in getting their 'thing' and experience transferred to the pages. There are better books and even better articles around (e.g. Gartner, Cimdata, Forrester, John Stark to name a few). So why 2 stars you might ask: well that's because the authors have included metrics and that's an important fact!

Perfect fit for me!:
This book was fine reading. I like this kind of business books; most important points are easy to pick, not too scientific, clear and lots of new ideas - it was a perfect fit for my current needs. (I'm a director responsible for business development in my company (manufacturing services SME) My business is to bring in new concepts to help our business and couple the possibilities of modern IT-systems to our processes. The book was very well written with good summaries at end of each chapter. One specific thing that I really appreciated was the point that the book as whole gives a good end-to-end view to the whole PLM area - from building a product strategy to supporting it in daily business with PLM information systems. And one other thing that I would like to point out is the use of terminology, it is so important; all terms are well explained in this book. After reading this it will be much easier for me to discuss about these matters with engineers etc.

Book Review 'Product Lifecycle Management':
My search for books on PLM concepts and philosophy led to this particular book. Frankly, apart from this one there are only two other books on the subject. One by Michael Grieves and the other by John Stark. Over the last 8 years, I have worked on the implementation and maintenance of PLM solutions i.e. the customization of the commercially available PLM product. So I was looking for more of a textbook on PLM which would explain the details/nuances of key functionalities of any PLM product such as item/structure management, product portfolio management, change management & workflow, configuration management and document management. I wanted to understand what these mean, how these are typically used by various customers thru examples. This book did explain those key functionalities viz. product structures, item/structure management and change management. But the book talks about PLM more from a strategic and management perspective. It clarified my understanding of the product process and order-delivery process. The challenges of product management in manufacturing and how PLM can help in meeting those challenges are explained very well by means of 3 case studies for different product types. I saw the value of the book in the excellent overview of a typical product lifecycle model and how the product and product management strategy is closely linked to the business strategy. With a good product management strategy implemented in a PLM solution, management should be able to take business decisions about launching, introducing new variants, discontinuing products based on the data from the PLM solution. I would say that this book is a must read for the senior management team viz. CEO, CIO, business unit owners, program and project managers, who are thinking about a PLM initiative in their company. It is essential for them to understand that a lot of home work has to be done by the organization itself to define a clear product management strategy, before they zero in on a commercial product and contract with a vendor to implement the PLM solution. Techies and novices to the world of PLM can read this to understand what PLM does and how it is used by the users in different organization verticals.