PLM for product engineering
and product management

The number of products that include a combination of software and electronics is rapidly growing and the requirements placed on flexibility, agility and variant management are therefore continuously increasing.

These are the main factors that drive digital engineering and product management, from product engineering all the way to operations, making advanced and forward thinking product lifecycle management (PLM) a must.

The evolution of PLM in the enterprise

Today, PLM is an integrated discipline that covers the entire product lifecycle and is embedded across the enterprise, from requirements management to the processing of IoT data. It needs to take into account the information provided by the mechatronics disciplines for every step along the way and feed lifecycle information back to the product engineering process. These product related pieces of information come together to describe the product as a digital information twin, which in turn is used to create the digital twin. Digital threads are established, enabling effective impact and change analysis across the product lifecycle.

A lifecycle file that is populated with new information throughout the product lifecycle and contains product data and documents that mirror the technical structure of a product, plant or technical infrastructure forms the digital information twin. It creates an accurate picture of a piece of machinery or plant. IoT data that comes back from the field constitutes vital information from which companies can draw conclusions for their product engineering and product management. This data contributes directly to a continuous improvement process (change management), transforming product lifecycle management into a closed loop PLM.

Digital twin vs. digital information twin

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Digital engineering and PLM

A digital information twin provides the basis for the digital twin – at any point in the lifecycle from rough design to production, commissioning and operational monitoring. So, before anyone would even consider the virtual commissioning of a product, the underlying data in the PLM system must be complete and consistent.

Product description: “Digital engineering with PRO.FILE“

Find out how the digital information twin is a prerequisite for digital twins and digital engineering and how you can achieve both with PRO.FILE.

Download the product description (PDF)

The digital thread:
benefits and implementation

How will an urgent service call impact changes to a critical part?

Once all the information created throughout the project engineering and product management process becomes available digitally in the Product Data Backbone of a PLM system, the relationships and dependencies within PLM processes, that used to only exist in the heads of relevant employees, are now visible and clearly traceable through the system. This allows companies to, for example, draw product engineering conclusions and perform impact analyses for predictive maintenance purposes. This is what’s called the digital thread.

A real-life example: 2G Energy AG

With PRO.FILE, 2G Energy now has a PLM solution that allows it to document even its most complex products and to control its workflows, including a number of Industry 4.0 applications.

We used to have paper-based assembly reports and stacks of copies circulate around the company. Now, the PRO.FILE project dashboard allows us to instantly track the status of any report in any service region and to immediately retrieve the information our customers are looking for.

Christoph Bäumer, regional service manager 2G Energy AG