Investigation into current industrial practices relating to product lifecycle management in a multi-national manufacturing company

ABSTRACT

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems have gained growing acceptance for managing all information relating to products throughout their full lifecycle, from idea conceptualisation through operations to servicing and disposal. This paper, through an in-depth exploratory study into a leading power generation manufacturing organization, presents current PLM issues experienced by manufacturing companies, exploring three separate topics: 1) PLM, 2) Knowledge Management and Lessons Learnt and 3) Product Servicing and Maintenance. Following a review of published literature, results of the investigation are presented, analysing the responses of 17 employees interviewed. With respect to Product Development, it was found that information traceability is time consuming and change management requests take too long to complete. Results relating to knowledge management indicate that the Company operates a ‘who you know’ culture, but do aim to capture lessons learned on the manufacturing shop floor and assembly lines. Therefore, a prototype design is proposed to integrate the capturing of lessons learnt within the existing PLM system.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• PLM
• knowledge management
• lessons learned
• product maintenance and service

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all at the collaborating company for their support with this project and their input to the Industrial Investigation. This research is based on work funded by the European Program INTERREG IVA France-Channel-UK under the project entitled “Building an Expertise Network for an Efficient Innovation and Training System (BENEFITS)”, under the INTERREG Programme France (Channel) – England, Ref 4177.

ORCID

Ismael A. Essop http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5583-0306

Richard D. Evans http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6367-0560

Shan Wan http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4368-9461

Muni P. Giddaluru http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5894-1952

James X. Gao http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5625-3654

David Baudry http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4386-4496

Sara Mahdikhah http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5618-269X

Mourad Messaadia http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3912-1788