Assessing Maturity Requirements for Implementing and Using Product Lifecycle Management

Product lifecycle management (PLM) is a systematic and holistic way to approach challenges that exist in managing product related information along products’ lifecycle from product design to its disposal. There is an established set of information management approaches that address important subsets of lifecycle information management challenges, e.g. product data management (PDM), ERP and CRM. Common feature to PLM processes is that their implementation requires changes in organization, systems, conventions, and importantly, skills and capabilities. The aim of this paper is to discuss the issue of PLM implementation and how it can be aided with capability maturity assessment. Empirical part of the paper points out how capability maturity assessment can be conducted and how it is applicable in different stages of implementing and developing PLM.