In order to have a better understanding of a project / product lifecycle, let’s have a look at a typical product lifecycle example.

If we look at the first stage of a project lifecycle, the cycle begins with a customer need. The customer need is then evaluated by the Sales and Project Managers to determine the product requirements. Based on the product requirements, engineering and design create drawings and CAD models. While engineering is busy with the design, Purchasing orders the required parts to build the product. Once the project is completed, the Quality department checks the product quality, after which your customer receives the product.

Well, this is actually only half of a product lifecycle!

Now if your customer reports an issue, you want to be able to capture the issue and report it back to the right people to make the right modifications.

With Fusion Lifecycle acting as the single source of product information, you can achieve a perfect lifecycle from the beginning of the project to the end. This will allow an organization to capture the product issues and report them to the right people, enabling them to make timely and effective adjustments.

Product Data Management (PDM): keeps your files, metadata and CAD documents organized. It is an engineering centric tool.

Enterprise Resource Management (ERP): Manages resource and transactional tasks for departments such as accounting, purchasing and inventory management.

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM): Manages product development, BOM, ECO, and workflows. PLM connects processes and workflows to each other from different parts of an organization. It is a platform that helps not only the engineering departments but also sales, purchasing, quality, and production.

Vault or other PDM applications are great tools for managing CAD documents, drawings, metadata and revision control. On the other hand, Fusion Lifecycle is a platform that supplements a PDM application by enabling an organization to achieve the following:

• New Product Introduction (NPI)
• Bill of Materials (BOM) Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Change Management (ECO, ECN and ECR)
• Quality Management
• Project Management
• Reporting and Traceability

Today, with the live connection between Autodesk Vault Professional and Fusion Lifecycle, companies can automatically export data such as a complete BOM from Vault to Fusion Lifecycle. In addition, the connection allows users to sync the change management in Fusion Lifecycle to Vault.

What ERP does not provide is functionality suited for managing Engineering Product Data like: Change Management, Quality Management Systems and new product Development.  These functions are very iterative in nature and are not well suited to an ERP system.

PLM, on the other hand, is well suited to managing these iterative processes.

The best practice in the industry is connecting these technologies and allowing data to be shared in an effective and streamlined manner.

PLM does not replace ERP, it compliments ERP!

In an organization where each department is using a different technology to achieve their goals, it becomes very difficult to streamline information and communications across teams. These different technologies do not communicate well with each other and can create significant communication barriers between teams.

By using PLM as the single source of information, Fusion Lifecycle complements the existing tools by connecting them together.

With Fusion Lifecycle: information captured by the sales team in a CRM will be visible to the engineering. Once engineering is done, a complete BOM and product information will be available to ERP, purchasing and production.

Fusion Lifecycle gives your organization the visibility through the entire project, from customer requirements all the way to production.