Complete Guide To Product Lifecycle Management: All You Need To Know About The Discipline

According to statistics, the global market size of the product lifecycle management industry stood at $45 billion in 2020 but is expected to surpass $75 billion by 2028. This roughly translates into a compound annual growth rate of 6.70% from 2021 to 2028.

This clearly indicates the exponential growth in the demand for product lifecycle management. With businesses putting more emphasis on reducing their costs and improving their product quality, this trend will not die anytime soon. Product lifecycle managers will continue to be the most sought after individuals in the future.

With effective product lifecycle management, you can phase out older products from the market and replace them with newer ones. Additionally, it can help you make the right decisions at every stage of the product lifecycle while helping your business with cost minimization.

In this article, you will learn everything you need to know about product lifecycle management.

What is Product Lifecycle Management?

Product lifecycle management is basically the strategic process of managing the lifecycle of the product from start to finish. As a result, it encompasses everything from people to processes, business systems to data, product development to product support, and product promotion to product discontinuation.

The primary purpose of product lifecycle management is to improve collaboration between different functional units and integrate business functions and processes to ensure business continuity and offer better accessibility. It highlights the journey of the product and helps you make data-driven decisions throughout the product phases.

Advantages of Product Lifecycle Management

You might be wondering why should my business take product lifecycle management seriously? Does it deliver business benefits or not? The short answer to this question is yes. Some of the advantages of product lifecycle management are as follows:

• Enhances product quality
• Reduce time to market
• Minimize costs
• Cut down waste
• Accurate forecasting
• Maximize collaboration
• Identify and capitalize on sales opportunities 

Phases of Product Life Cycle

The product life cycle can be divided into five different phases.

• Product Conceptualization and Design

The first phase of product lifecycle management is conceptualization and design. As the name suggests, a product idea is conceived during this phase. Next, the concept is put into the design. A mockup or a prototype of the product was created during this stage.

• Product Development

Once the logical structure was finalized, now is the time to finalize the design. The design needs to be further refined in light of the feedback.

• Product Production and Launch

In this stage, the product goes into the product after the design of the product has been finalized. Once the product is mass-produced, the product is launched and made available in the market.

• Product Service and Support

Once the product is launched, the next phase is to provide support and service for your product. This is where most businesses falter as they think that their job is done when the product is launched. What they don’t realize is that customer satisfaction depends heavily on the quality of the service and support you offer to your customers.

• Product Retirement

It is quite tricky to identify when the product has completed its lifecycle and needs to be phased out. Most businesses struggle with it as they fail to retire outdated products and introduce new products at the right time. 

Product Lifecycle Use Cases and Applications

There are numerous use cases and applications of product lifecycle management but some of them are as follows:

• Design and manufacturing

Product lifecycle management can streamline the processes used in design and manufacturing especially the software tools to deliver higher productivity.

• Operational support

If you have a centralized product lifecycle management system, it can provide much needed operational support to your global operations. 

• Product commercialization

Whether it is about developing unified workflows, document management or data governance, product lifecycle management has you covered.

• Data-driven decision making

With all the product information easily available to every department, they don’t have to go through a lengthy process to get access to the data they need. This can save a lot of time and improve the productivity of your business.

Product Lifecycle Management Processes and Systems

Instead of treating product lifecycle management as just the data repository, you should also use it as a communication tool to stay connected to all the stakeholders. Product lifecycle management is not just about the technology such as Los Angeles dedicated server and data stored on your VPS Singapore, it is also about the processes involved. 

Here are some of the reasons why enterprises opt for product lifecycle management systems.

• Design and process document management
• Workflow and process management
• Import and export data to and from the system
• Item centric task assignment
• Ensure compliance through material content tracking
• Organize and track document meta-data

Product Lifecycle Management Software

If you are in the market to purchase product lifecycle management software, you will find dozens of different options. This makes the decision making process more complex. To simplify the process for you, we have listed some of the best product lifecycle management options that you can check out.

• Oracle Fusion Cloud Product Lifecycle Management

Oracle Fusion combines cutting edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, the internet of things and more to deliver digital twin and thread capabilities.

• SAP Product Lifecycle Management

SAP PLM takes the pain out of creating a bill of material and seamlessly integrates with its ERP solution. 

• AutoDesk Upchain and Fusion 360 Manage

This cloud-based offering from AutoDesk simplifies the process of managing everything with a unified dashboard and its efficient workflow management boosts your productivity just like cheap server hosting or singapore dedicated servers does.

• Siemens Teamcenter

What really makes Siemens Teamcenter stand out from the crowd is its amazing change management features and outstanding CAD integration capabilities.

• PTC Windchill

PTC Windchill’s open architecture not only allows for exceptional third party integration with other systems but it also gives you more room for customization. You can even integrate it with technologies like the internet of things.

Does this guide help you in understanding the basics of product lifecycle management? Share your experience with us in the comments section below.