Product lifecycle

In industry, product lifecycle management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its inception through the engineering, design and manufacture, as well as the service and disposal of manufactured products. PLM integrates people, data, processes, and business systems and provides a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprises. History The inspiration for the burgeoning business process now known as PLM came from American Motors Corporation (AMC). The automaker was looking for a way to speed up its product development process to compete better against its larger competitors in 1985, according to François Castaing, Vice President for Product Engineering and Development. AMC focused its R&D efforts on extending the product lifecycle of its flagship products, particularly Jeeps, because it lacked the "massive budgets of General Motors, Ford, and foreign competitors." After introducing its compact Jeep Cherokee (XJ),

Diving into the dynamics of product evolution

Olivier Waeber

Three distinct stages describe the technological evolution of a product over time: ferment, convergence on a dominant design and an era of incremental change. Until recently, the era of incremental change has been characterized as stable and one that involves low levels of technological innovation. However, recent studies have indicated that this era of incremental change may actually be quite disruptive. This raises the question as to which processes and mechanisms in new product development during the era of incremental change trigger high levels of innovation. First, this dissertation offers a conceptual study about how collaboration practices with suppliers characterized by a relatively high intensity shift the technological evolution away from the era of incremental change towards the stage of ferment. Second, a quantitative study of the medical technology industry in Europe reveals that involving suppliers in new product development during the era of incremental change may trigger technological novelties that are incorporated into new product architectures; A new product architecture shifts the technological evolution towards the era of ferment. According to the results of the second study, it appears that only by improving products based on established architectures are firms unable to innovate new technologies. Additionally, the stage of convergence on a dominant design has mainly been examined on the basis of technological convergence. However, a possible convergence on a dominant design away from the stage of ferment also involves a cognitive variable. Third, this study observes the cognitive variable while examining the nascent smartwatch market. Within a nascent market, firms within previously distinct domains compete with one another. Firms lack a better understanding of customer preferences and develop initial products based on assumptions that are rooted within their previous industry. This qualitative study illustrates that firms from the same prior industry conceptualize their products in a similar way with regard to nascent product features. Overall, this dissertation more deeply explores the product life-cycle of technological development, provides a better understanding of the dynamics during the era of incremental change, demonstrates how the technological life-cycle of a product may shift from one stage to the other and supplies additional explanations concerning how a dominant design may emerge out of the ferment stage of technological development.

EPFL2017

An Ontology-Based Approach for Closed-Loop Product Lifecycle Management

Aristeidis Matsokis

The main goal of the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the management of all the data associated to a product during its lifecycle. Lifecycle data is being generated by events and actions (of various lifecycle agents which are humans and/or software systems) and it is distributed along the product's lifecycle phases: Beginning of Life (BOL) including design and manufacturing, Middle of Life (MOL) including usage and maintenance and End of Life (EOL) including recycling, disposal or other options. Closed-Loop PLM extends the meaning of PLM in order to close the loop of the information among the different lifecycle phases. The idea is that information of MOL could be used at the EOL stage to support deciding the most appropriate EOL option (especially to make decision for re-manufacturing and re-use) and combined with the EOL information it could be used as feedback in the BOL for improving the new generations of the product. Several PLM models have been developed utilising various technologies and methods towards providing aspects of the Closed-Loop PLM concept. Ontologies are rapidly becoming popular in various research fields. There is a tendency both in converting existing models into ontology-based models, and in creating new ontology-based models from scratch. The aim of this dissertation is to include the advantages and features provided by the ontologies into PLM models towards achieving Closed-Loop PLM. Hence, an ontology model of a Product Data and Knowledge Management Semantic Object Model for PLM has been developed. The transformation process of the model into an ontology-based one, using Web Ontology Language-Description Logic (OWL-DL), is described in detail. The background and the motives for converting existing PLM models to ontologies are also provided. The new model facilitates several of the OWL-DL capabilities, while maintaining previously achieved characteristics. Furthermore, case studies based on various application scenarios, are presented. These case studies deal with data integration and interoperability problems, in which a significant number of reasoning capabilities is implemented, and highlight the utilisation of the developed model. Moreover, in this work, a generic concept has been developed, tackling the time treatment in PLM models. Time is the only fundamental dimension which exists along the entire life of an artefact and it affects all artefacts and their qualities. Most commonly in PLM models, time is an attribute in parts such as "activities" and "events" or is a separate part of the model ("four dimensional models"). In this work the concept is that time should not be one part of the model, but it should be the basis of the model, and all other elements should be parts of it. Thus, we introduce the "Duration of Time concept". According to this concept all aspects and elements of a model are parts of time. Case studies demonstrate the applicability and the advantages of the concept in comparison to existing methodologies.

EPFL2010

Diving into the dynamics of product evolution

Olivier Waeber

EPFL2017

An Ontology-Based Approach for Closed-Loop Product Lifecycle Management

Aristeidis Matsokis

EPFL2010

How closed-loop PLM improves Knowledge Management over the complete product lifecycle and enables the factory of the future

Diving into the dynamics of product evolution

An Ontology-Based Approach for Closed-Loop Product Lifecycle Management

How closed-loop PLM improves Knowledge Management over the complete product lifecycle and enables the factory of the future

Diving into the dynamics of product evolution

An Ontology-Based Approach for Closed-Loop Product Lifecycle Management