Management of product complexity through integrated PLM in a multi-lifecycle environment

The products in the telecommunications industry typically consist of several modules that in sum create the customer benefit (e.g. Multi-Play products). Each module embodies its own lifecycle, which implies an additional product complexity in terms of module design, module management and module removal from the product. Release Engineering is an approach to counter this challenge. The authors provide reasons why the holistic view on the Product Lifecycle Management is critical for an efficient PLM, and present a new approach for PLM-Process Management in a multi-lifecycle environment. Taking into consideration the typical characteristics of product components, three variants of a PLM-Process are introduced in the paper: PLM-Flex, PLM-Max and PLM-Fast. The paper closes with the presentation of a short case study validating the proposed process design for a company in the telecommunications industry.