Sharepoint and PLM
How is Sharepoint different than PLM? To answer this question, let’s establish the definition of both products. SharePoint is a technology platform designed to facilitate collaboration. PLM, or Product Lifecycle Management, is designed to manage the data and processes related to our product from inception to end of life. While there is some overlap between the two products, let’s talk about a few things that PLM does well that you might struggle with in SharePoint.
Managing Structured Documents. A structured document is defined as a document that has relations to other documents. The first thing that will come to most people’s minds is a parametric CAD file. PLM systems do a very good job of interrogating a CAD file, determining the associated files, creating links and managing them together. In a PLM system, you can choose a document and view its related documents (i.e. where used, composed of). You can’t do this with SharePoint. SharePoint is great at managing unstructured documents but is not really architected in a way to manage structured documents.
Managing Bills of Materials. BOMs are similar to structured documents in that a single item has references to other items, and as with structured documents, when you manage a parent item, you may need to manage the child items as well. Since SharePoint does not easily manage structure it would not be feasible to use SharePoint to manage your BOMs. Additionally, BOM management usually calls for effectivity management, BOM views (i.e. as designed, as manufactured, as serviced, etc.), costing and other BOM-specific type functions that SharePoint is not designed to do.
View and Markup. SharePoint does not have any built-in viewers to facility viewing and redlining. The viewing and redlining process is often integral to the change process, and while SharePoint might be able to manage the document, it does not allow for the graphical communication of proposed changes.
SharePoint can help enhance communication and collaboration, but don’t make the mistake of thinking SharePoint is the only tool you need in your toolbox. Likewise, you could try to use SharePoint for PLM tasks, but that’s not really what it is intended for and there are other tools that will do a much better job. SharePoint is a fantastic tool and probably has a place in your environment. We would love to help you with your SharePoint initiative including how PLM and SharePoint can be used together.
Tags: BOMs, collaboration, parametric CAD, PLM, redlining, SharePoint, viewing
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