In recent years, efficient management of product data has become essential in most companies. This due to the fact, that product complexity is increasing rapidly in most cases. Moreover, the business processes have been shortened over the last years which led to more parallel operations. These aspects caused a steady increase in amount of product data and also in linking-up of these data. For a efficient process handling it is no longer sufficient, to store product data on local data bases. Therefore it is necessary to establish easy access for users to all relevant product information as well as to capture the links between these information objects. These requirements can be met with structured, easy accessible databases for the relevant product data. For the coverage of these tasks, a lot of companies implement so called product data management systems (PDM systems). PDM systems are standard software systems which are specifically designed for the management of product data. Unlike proprietary databases, which are developed inhouse for a specific data management task, PDM systems provide extensive and sophisticated functionality. The evident advantages of using a PDM system compared to proprietary data bases is, that the effort for system design and maintenance is reduced. Although PDM systems include a variety of standard functions they have to be customized to specific company or process needs. Here majority of cases indicates, that processes to be supported are complex, highly networked and interdisciplinary. In this paper, a generic approach is discussed, which is particularly designed for implementation of a PDM system in large-scale enterprises. One part of this approach is the step-by-step implementation of the existing product data. A critical success factor for the implementation of a PDM system is user acceptance in addition to cost effectiveness and functionality. Many information systems, which from a functional point of view are appropriate to satisfy the users needs are nevertheless not accepted by the users. Reasons for that are manifold, for example the user perceived benefit during the implementation phase is too low or users are not supported sufficently or appropriately. These circumstances in most cases cause long implementation times culminating in the fact, that the information system won't be used despite undeniable advantages. Therefore a method has been developed to evaluate the benefit of a PDM system from a user point of view in correlation to the data population level. The application of this method allows to evaluate different implementation scenarios beforehand. The practical use of the generic approach for the implementation of a PDM system as well as the optimization method for the PDM implementation steps are shown on the basis of three examples from the PDM-implementation within the electrics/electronics department at BMW AG.
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In recent years, efficient management of product data has become essential in most companies. This due to the fact, that product complexity is increasing rapidly in most cases. Moreover, the business processes have been shortened over the last years which led to more parallel operations. These aspects caused a steady increase in amount of product data and also in linking-up of these data. For a efficient process handling it is no longer sufficient, to store product data on local data bases. Ther...
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