Product data management system-based support for engineering project management

Product development projects are often extremely large, with many hundreds of tasks and thousands of work packages, and pose severe requirements on information management. This paper analyses how Product Data Management (PDM) systems and Project Management Information (PMI) systems should be used to support project work. It is concluded that PDM systems should be used to carry out the project, utilizing lifecycle, workflow and organization modelling functionalities and the common product data models, while PMI systems should be used for high-level project scheduling/visualization, accounting, and reporting activities. An integration of the PMI systems functionality with the PDM systems enables engineering teams to collaboratively on a real-time basis manage project and related product information in a dispersed product development organization.