Organisational change and knowledge management in PLM implementation

PLM, Product Lifecycle Management is a new organizational, technology based, business model to run Company activities for accomplishing current product innovation requirements. The PLM business model may be applied both in the manufacturing sector, in the Engineering & Contracting and in the service sector. PLM is being considered as one of the major technological and organisational challenges of this decade to face the shortening of product lifecycles, the trend toward collaboration in product design and product manufacturing and, in general, to deal with the large amount of product related data amongst business actors in inter-enterprise contexts. The implementation of the PLM approach can foster a company product innovation ability, supposing organisational change and knowledge management are jointly conducted.