Challenges and Opportunities in Product Life Cycle Management in the Context of Industry 4.0
Xinxiang Ji, Shiva Abdoli
Abstract
Global competition forces assembly, production, and logistic systems to be highly efficient and agile in delivering their product-systems to customers. To achieve this, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Product Data Management approaches have been developed for managing product-related information across its lifecycle. However, the full potential of PLM has yet to be realized. Industry 4.0 refers to the fourth industrial revolution which promotes the usage of information and digital production with key enabling technologies including digital twins, internet of things, cloud technologies and machine learning. This paper aims to investigate opportunities that industry 4.0 technologies can offer to realize PLM by reviewing existing scholarly papers in this context. The characteristics of industry 4.0 technologies and their usage on PLM is also discussed. As a result of such critical analysis and cross-investigation, this paper discusses the challenges with PLM and proposes future research directions and a roadmap for realization of an integrated PLM by application of key industry 4.0 technologies.