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- Welcome
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- Update
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* Welcome *
Welcome to this issue of 2PLM, an e-zine distributed every two weeks on
a free subscription basis. This week's article, "Integrating PDM and SCM", is from
Ivica Crnkovic, Ulf Asklund and Annita Persson Dahlqvist. But first, a quick update
about the PLM Interest Group.
* PLM Interest Group *
PLM enables companies to manage products across their lifecycles.
It helps get products to market faster, provide better support for their use, and
manage end-of-life better.
Currently, the activities of PLM are split between different
functions such as marketing, engineering, manufacturing,
sales and service. That makes PLM more complicated, slows it down, creates quality
problems and leads to additional costs.
Putting PLM in place will take time - time to implement new
lifecycle processes, time to organize product data, time to
implement new Information Systems.
Companies can work on PLM alone or they can do it
collaboratively - in meetings or over the web - through the
PLMIG.
What's better - doing it alone or doing it with top performers?
If you are interested in working collaboratively with PLM leaders, join the
PLM Interest Group. Become a member for 2004.
Benefits of PLMIG membership include:
- improve your company's understanding of PLM and the related benefits
- interact with PLM thought-leaders
- expand your industry relationships
- get leading-edge PLM know-how
- gain competitive advantage
- influence the future of PLM
- receive membership
services
such as access to the PLMIG portal, and participation in workshops, conferences,
meetings and seminars
- participate in
activities
of the Interest Group such as PLM benchmarking, definition of a PLM Capability
Model and metrics
- receive the Product Lifecycle Management Journal
Join now. The individual annual
subscription fee is Euro 350 (about USD 440).
* Integrating PDM and SCM *
Example A
"It is a challenge to manage documentation of systems consisting of both
software and hardware. The software developers prefer to keep the software
related documentation in the SCM system, while at the same time there is a
need to manage this documentation together with the overall product
documentation" - ABB, Sweden (Ref. 1).
Example B
"We meet new challenges in the management of software components consisting
of internally developed units, Open Source Code, and Commercial
Off the Shelf (COTS), complying with different import/export rules and
restrictions, and use them as embedded software in different versions
and variants of devices, products and systems". - Annita Persson
Dahlqvist, Ericsson AB, Sweden.
These examples are typical problems for many companies today - the problems
of overall configuration management support of a complex product.
How can this be true - despite a long tradition of infrastructure support
in both system development and software development?
Within the area of hardware and system development, Product Data Management
(PDM) has been successfully used for years. PDM is the discipline of
controlling evolution of a product, i.e. management of the product data
and processes used during the entire life cycle of a product.
Software products have, on the other hand, been managed by Software
Configuration Management (SCM), the discipline encompassing the control
of the evolution of software products during their development life cycle.
Over the years, PDM and SCM have evolved in parallel, with little or no
communication between the separate developers of software and hardware,
resulting in two similar disciplines but with tools with slightly different
functionality.
At the software and system integration point, when building a complete product
out of several components, many companies experience serious problems -
information integration is found to be difficult to achieve, especially
when managed by different tools from different domains. Why is it so?
There are many reasons, technical and non-technical. Technically, it is
difficult to transfer information between different systems in an efficient
way and to keep information in many systems consistent; especially since
PDM and SCM tools have not been designed to communicate with each other. Non-technical
factors, such as companies' organizations, or cultural differences between
the users of PDM and SCM, can be even more difficult obstacles.
System and hardware engineers often do not understand software engineers
and their demands on a software configuration management system, and vice
versa.
PDM users and SCM users may use the same or similar terms, but these
terms often have different meanings to each category and are understood
differently, resulting in misunderstandings and a suspiciousness of the
other discipline.
Nevertheless, the interoperability of PDM and SCM will be a key factor in
the efficient management of total product information.
The question is how to bridge the gap between PDM and SCM tools, and between their
users.
The first step towards this is to build a common understanding of the two
disciplines. Engineers, developers and project managers must increase their
knowledge of both disciplines. System engineers should learn more about the
software development process and the SCM support for this process;
software engineers should build understanding about system engineering,
life cycle process, and support to this process provided by PDM. In this
way both PDM and SCM users can understand the needs and requirements of
the other discipline from their own perspective.
The second step is to understand the system life cycle, all processes and,
in particular, to identify the points in which different processes merge
and require information provided in the sub-processes. In many cases, the
total process can be significantly improved by separating the sub-processes
and clearly identifying the information needed in the integration points.
The third step is to build a support for the information integration by
different tools; in particular this can be achieved by integration of PDM,
SCM, document management tools and similar engineering tools.
These steps are not trivial; they require a lot of effort, knowledge
and experience. A summary of the problems, approaches, solutions and
experiences can be found in Ref. 1.
Reference
1. Ivica Crnkovic, Ulf Asklund, Annita Persson Dahlqvist : Implementing and
integrating Product Data Management and Software Configuration
Management, Artech House, 2003, ISBN: 1-58053-498-8
To order.
For questions and comments, please
contact
Ivica Crnkovic.
Ivica Crnkovic is Professor of Industrial Software Engineering at
Malardalen University, Sweden.
Annita Persson Dahlqvist is a senior specialist in CM, SCM and
PDM at Ericsson AB, Sweden.
Ulf Asklund is Associate Professor at
Lund University, Sweden.
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