Visualization Model for Product Lifecycle Management

Nowadays, new business strategies as the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) are implemented by manufacturing industries in order to design and build better quality products more effectively. The PLM contributes to improve the product development process through the efficient administration of all technical information involved. It operates through multiple software solutions and incorporates all the information about the product. Up to now most of companies only integrate information from CAD/CAM/CAE software into a database managed from a PDM system (Product Data Management). As a matter of fact this way of proceding provides better results for companies, such as time/cost reduction of product production, Nevertheless important questions raise: are these the products that people really need? Are these products developed taking into account the final user's viewpoint? Are them sustainable for the community and the environment? Are social, economical, environmental issues taken into consideration? The answer is usually 'no'. We must remember that it is important to build the product in a correct way but it is even more important to build 'the right' product. The Human Centred Design (HCD) is a methodological approach which aims to develop products that are easy to use, to understand, and worry-free for the users. The HCD process helps to promote innovation that starts within the community and promotes the concept of “universal design” to enable users' participation during the entire product's lifecycle. Accordingly, it is crucial to combine the benefits of a business strategy, as the PLM, with the advantages of a design social strategy, as HCD. This work shows a model to incorporate HCD into PLM based on different methodological approaches, especially those related with the role of Industrial Designer (‘Design for X’). The model identifies what is done (process areas and activities), when it is done (workflows), who does what (roles - skills) and how it can be done better (methods and tools) mainly from a designer's perspective. With the support of Master of Science students, some case studies have been developed for each single product lifecycle process' area in order to validate the model. These case studies evaluate the convenience of the model as processes' design tool and ensured that the information collected from the users can be deployed in a PLM system. The work has been mainly focused in the process areas of Requirements Management, Product Design, Product Testing and Product Configuration and Change Management. The model elaborated through this work has proven to be a convenient tool for the identification of user's issues, aims and solutions in order to make on-going improvements to business processes involving the users themselves. It also applies the principles of the HCD to the PLM promoting the design process and offering a way to build products based on the physical and cognitive characteristics of human beings.