Product Life Cycle Management: Stages, Software, Engineering

Product life cycle management is the process of managing the life cycle of a product. This also includes from the time of manufacturing, designing, and bringing it to market until it expires. Furthermore, product life cycle management software makes it easy for firms to track and share data. In this piece, you will learn about the stages and engineering product life cycle management.

Product Life Cycle Management

The term “product life cycle” means the time you bring a product into the consumer market until it expires from the market. Management and marketing professionals make use of this term all the time. Also, as a means of deciding when it is the right time to increase advertising and reduce market prices. Furthermore, expand to new markets, or repackage new designs. A company suffers higher marketing costs when introducing a product to the market but experiences higher sales as product adoption grows. Product life cycle management is the process of monitoring a product over the course of its existence in the market.

Product lifecycle management is a procedure that allows businesses to monitor, manage, and influence the development of their product in order to maintain its viability in the market for as long as possible. Again, product life cycle management plays a significant role, especially at a time when innovation is one of the key factors for having a successful business. In addition, product life cycle management helps manufacturers by providing strategies for developing new products at a lower cost and bringing them to market faster. It also sees strategies for business and has three popular fundamentals that improve growth.

Assumptions of Product Life Cycle Management

The assumption of product life cycle management includes the following:

The life of a product and the integrity of that product throughout its stay in the market.
Sales of products have different stages, and each of these problems and challenges also affects the sellers.
Each product needs several methods to manufacture, market, and human resource strategies in each product’s life cycle stage.

A proper design of a product makes buyers to place value on it. It is important that before taking any product to the market, the industry has to make a complete check. such as the different laws and regulations, the needs of the market, economics, and values. A good business requires that you sell a product before it expires.

Advantages of Product Life Cycle Management

Every product life cycle management has its advantages let’s consider the following:

The product life cycle better gives way for both marketers and business developers to understand how each product or brand sits with a company’s portfolio. This enables the company to adjust resources to specific products based on those products placed within the product life cycle.
The product life cycle has a positive impact on the growth of the economy and promotes innovation.
Product life cycle management discourages supporting a product that is out of date.
The product life cycle helps companies that use product life to make their products safer, faster, cheaper, and more effective for needs. Also, as a product moves through the life stages.

Disadvantages of Product Life Cycle

On the negative side, not every industry and every product use a product life cycle. Examples of this are beverage lines whose products have been in the maturity stage for years.
The product life cycle may be artificial in industries with legal or trademark restrictions.
Another negative side of the product life cycle is that when a product enters the maturity stage, a company can feel the urge to replace it.
Also, product life cycle management leads to product waste, especially for producers who intend to produce new products every few years since the product has a long shelf life.

Stages Of Product Life Cycle Management

The stages of product life cycle management in every market plan include strategies. Also, you need to have a clear understanding of product life stages. furthermore, stages of product life cycle management help you to know the position that your product holds in the market. lastly, this stage allows you make market research to inform your effort throughout the life cycle. There are 4 stages in product life cycle management which include the following:

#1. Development

The first stage in the product life cycle is development. Concept testing with real potential users is an important part of this step. Validate your market potential early, so you can begin raising funds to launch. You can be funding this stage yourself or you as well be seeking investors.

#2. Introduction

The introduction stage is the first stage that introduces customers to a product. During the introduction stage of product life cycle management, there is always no competition for a product as it is arriving for the first time. Although companies generally experience lower sales as a result of promoting a price. This pricing is just to engage customers to get the product. In addition, during this stage, a company needs to increase its investment in advertising and strategy for marketing campaigns.

#2. Growth Stage

If the product passes the introduction stage successfully, then it moves to the growth stage. This stage of life cycle management deals with the growing demand, an increase in production, and the availability of your product. During the growth stage, every product becomes more recognized and popular. Furthermore, if a company still chooses to invest much in showing, the product will eventually face heavy competition. Notwithstanding, make use of marketing campaigns to separate your product from others instead of introducing it to the market.

Growth stages of life cycle management experience financial growth, which results in an increase in sales and brings higher revenue. At this point, Competition among other products increases, which forces the company to come up with an increase in price.

#3. Maturity Stage

The maturity stages of product life cycle management have the most profits while there is a decline in the cost of production and marketing. Also, when the market is full of products, competition becomes higher than at any other stage of the life cycle. During this growth period, profit lines start going down totally. Depending on the product, a company can decide to redesign its product or introduce new ways to enhance consumer awareness. which includes getting more responses from customers and understanding their needs. The maturity stage comes with a high level of competition as companies strive to have enough good products to ensure that they stay in the mature stage. It is important that you explain a new product while you also need to separate a matured product.

#4. Decline Stage

The life cycle management process ends with the decline stage. Due to the increase in competition, businesses now copy the product. The product might lose market share and deteriorate as competition rises as other businesses try to copy its success. Due to market saturation and competition from other products, product sales can start to fall, and the company will decide not to pursue further marketing strategies since customers already have made up their minds about whether or not they are loyal to the company’s products.

In the event that a product is completely retired, the company will stop developing support for the product and will stop all marketing efforts. In other words, the company can decide to update the product or replace it completely. The phase of a product’s life cycle affects how it is presented to customers. While a mature product needs to be differentiated from its rivals, a new product needs to be explained.

Product Life Cycle Management Software

Product life cycle management software (PLMS) is a tool that controls data throughout the entire process of developing a product, from conception to manufacturing, servicing, and disposal.

The Product life management software is used by companies like Ulm software to increase productivity and collaboration, improve quality, boost creativity, and reduce time to market for a product. Furthermore, this product software is used by many industries in integrating data and documents.

Software for managing the product lifecycle can be integrated with a wide range of applications, such as CAD and ERP systems. It is typically utilized by a number of users within a company, frequently with different roles and permissions.

Importance of software

The software helps in managing the entire information and workflows at each stage of the lifecycle of a product or service.
It generates data from items such as products, documents, specifications, engineering changes in orders, and quality workflows.
Product life cycle management software brings changes in business and provides a digital foundation for product development and records.
Software product life cycle management helps to drive work faster in innovations and improves how products are manufactured, designed, maintained, and serviced.

Software Examples of Product Life Cycle

#1. SAP

360° support for all the product-related processes is provided by SAP PLM software. In addition to SAP, other products can be used with SAP PLM. It has the following characteristics:

management of documents.
batch management and change management.
It provides tutorials and hosts webinars as a learning resource.
managing the BOM and centralizing PPM.

#2. Oracle Agile

This software assists in streamlining processes, centralizing data, and producing high-quality goods. It helps in maximizing profit. Let’s consider its characteristics

The characteristic of this helps you to see problems and provide solutions to them.
For a new product, the portfolio management feature will assist in managing schedules, resources, and a variety of other things.
The RFQ (Request for Quote) process will benefit from the cost management characteristics.

#3. Autodesk

Autodesk PLM is cloud-based data and process management that connects your people, processes, and data. Work with product data on your desktop, laptop, or mobile device to review designs, see the bill of material items, create and participate in change orders, and change lifecycle states.#5. Teamcenter

#4. Teamcenter

Teamcenter is a modern, adaptable product lifecycle management (PLM) system. It connects people and processes, across functional silos, with a digital thread for innovation. No matter how you deploy Teamcenter – on-premises, on-cloud, or SaaS—you get the same proven solutions.

#5. Duro

Duro’s enterprise cloud software empowers distributed hardware engineering and manufacturing teams to streamline their product data management, build a resilient supply chain, and accelerate product development. As simple to use as a spreadsheet, Duro leverages software automation to increase workforce productivity and reduce risks.

#6. Backbone

Backbone helps fashion and apparel brands turn their design into a product. The cloud-based software is ideal for fast-growing companies that design and develop apparel, accessories, footwear, outdoor, home goods, luxury, etc. Built to deliver production cycle efficiency, Backbone’s platform offers unlimited custom fields, line sheets, image annotators, bills of materials, reports, and more.

#7. Enovia

Enovia product software offers features such as management of bills, design, change, and classification of IP. This software is also used by many stakeholders across different industries and provides technical innovation and business applications. Enovia is also renowned for its top-notch customer service techniques, which support the creation of new products and guarantee the stability of the market.

Engineering Product Life Cycle Management

Engineering product life cycle management (EPLC) is the application of systems design and analysis to systems engineering (SE) activities. Similarly, engineering product life cycle management takes place during the critical transition from product development to production. A good example of engineering product life cycle management is the redesign of the wing of an F-86 Stratos Sabre Vintage Jet Fighter. Furthermore, systems engineers deal with whole systems having many separate contributing components/parts. Product life cycle engineering focuses on defining customer needs and requiring functionality in the early development cycle.

Benefits Of Engineering Product Management

The system engineering effort spans the entire system lifecycle. Similarly, the benefit of engineering product lifecycle management is that
It fosters quicker departmental responses and enhances communication.
Further, reduces the likelihood of costly and untimely design changes.
Systems engineers deal with whole systems having many separate contributing components/parts.

FAQs For Product Life Cycle Management

what are the 5 stages of product life cycle

Development stage
Introduction
Growth
Maturity
Decline

what is product lifecycle management

product lifecycle management is the process of when a product is introduced to the consumer market and when it actually leaves the market. It also has to do with the life span of a product.

why do we need product life management

we need PLM for many reasons which include:

To know the value of a product
To determine the needs of the buyers
Understanding of a product life span