Key performance indicators for PLM benefits evaluation: The Alcatel Alenia Space case study

From a theoretical point of view, people are used to think that the adoption of innovative business solutions, for optimizing the product lifecycle, should always guarantee a sufficient return on the investment (ROI), even if the concrete benefits that the investment has given to the company are sometimes difficult to evaluate. Looking at the technical literature it is possible to find a lot of ROI’s estimation metrics for the evaluation of business strategies, even if after the analysis of the theoretical concepts no one faces with a real implementation of the methodology proposed. This paper proposes a solution, based on the key performance indicator (KPI) method, for evaluating the benefits introduced by the adoption of a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) tool in a one of a kind company. The methods have been validated with its implementation into an Aerospace and Defence company (Alcatel Alenia Space), highlighting the improvement created by the implementation of the PLM solution in the everyday activities and showing the system’s contribution for some key-process as configuration, change and documentation.