The Evolution of PLM:
The term “product lifecycle management” emerged after nearly twenty years of market and technological evolution. In the mid 1980’s to early 1990’s, there was confusion as to what to call product-related information, particularly engineering information. As the data came to be referred to generically as product data, the term product data management (PDM) emerged. CIMdata heavily promoted both the term and the nascent industry through publications and educational events. Both users and solution providers embraced PDM and used the term for many years. In fact, PDM remains a foundation component of PLM. Over the last several years, more acronyms created confusion in the market, as people began to consider the product lifecycle and collaboration—PDM, cPDm, CPC. These terms overlap and carry multiple meanings. PLM has emerged as the term used to describe a business approach for the creation, management, and use of product-associated intellectual capital and information throughout the lifecycle.
Addressing Business Challenges: Businesses today face three on-going challenges Customer intimacy, Achieving operational excellence, Providing product leadership.
Improving customer intimacy requires understanding and responding quickly to current and potential customers, their needs, establishing effective relationships with them, and providing consistent, long-term customer value. Achieving operational excellence requires enterprises to focus on operating efficiently, effectively, and flexibly, working with their partners to reduce the cost and time necessary to deliver high-quality products that meet their customer’s requirements in a timely manner. 
Providing product leadership means delivering leading edge products and solutions tailored to customer needs. All of these challenges require getting the right products to the right market, at the right time, for the right cost. To meet these challenges, businesses must become more innovative. However, being an innovative business doesn’t simply mean creating innovative products. It also means improving the processes a company uses to produce its products and how it supports its products using innovative approaches to the complete product lifecycle. Today, innovation is recognized as critical for a business to maintain its competitiveness in the marketplace. However, innovation must be achieved while reducing overall product-related costs across development, production, and service. A primary business driver is increasing product complexity and customization. Not only are mechanical configurations getting more intricate, products increasingly include complex electronics and software. In addition, customers want to have “their” product or plant configured to their individual specifications. The increase in product complexity, coupled with the desire for personalized configurations, requires an enhanced ability to quickly define new product variations and options, and to be able to manage the configurations being offered. Additionally, companies must manage the “entire” product or product family, integrating elements such as product recipes and packaging to meet regional requirements and regulations.
