<p>Copyright TM Forum 2006-2008<br/></p><p><br/></p><p><b>Overview</b><br/></p><p>Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is responsible for the managing the entire lifecycle of the product and its underlying components.   This includes all of the processes required to design, build, deploy, maintain and ultimately retire the product.   Product Lifecycle Management includes those activities and tools used to define new products and updates to existing products.  Generally these activities require a significant degree of collaboration, often across multiple geographic locations. This could even include the gathering of customer needs/preferences and mapping those to current and future product capabilities.  There will also be a significant use of project and program management activities and tools to satisfy these functional areas.<br/></p><p><br/></p><p><b>Functionality</b><br/></p><p>A PLM application should support the following major functions:<br/></p><p><ul><li>Solicit product requirements</li><br/></p><p><li>Model products</li><br/></p><p><li>Provide detailed product specifications</li><br/></p><p><li>Introduce new products</li><br/></p><p><li>Manage existing products</li><br/></p><p><li>Obsolesce/retire products</li><br/></p><p><li>Implement marketing & offer strategies</li><br/></p><p></ul><br/></p><p><b>Supported Contracts</b><br/></p><p>Application services that should be available from the PLM capability of Product management include the following:<br/></p><p>(Note: In this context the term Service is being used as an application service (i.e. API, Web Service) and not the SID definition of Service as it pertains to telecommunications.)<br/></p><p><br/></p><p><ul><li>Get product lifecycle state: Retrieves the current lifecycle state for the product offering or product component based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get prior lifecycle state: Retrieves the previous lifecycle state for the product offering or product component based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get next lifecycle state: Retrieves the next lifecycle state for the product offering or product component based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get lifecycle state owner/group: Retrieves information about the person or group responsible for the current lifecycle state of the product offering or product component based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get lifecycle state expiration: Retrieves the expiration of the current lifecycle state for the product offering or product component based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get lifecycle state jeopardy/SLA: Retrieves the jeopardy/timeout information for the current lifecycle state for the product offering or product component based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p></ul><br/></p>