A service-based approach for next-generation Product Lifecycle Management

Nowadays, one of the main challenges for companies is the effective management of IT-systems. In times where requirements and companies change steadily, the IT-infrastructure has to adopt these changes as well: new systems have to be integrated or existing adapted. Even worse, these systems work together to support business processes of a company and, thus, the infrastructures becomes complex and difficult to manage. The same situation is true for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) that accompanies a product development by means of interconnected IT systems running on complex IT infrastructures. This paper introduces a viable solution to the integration of all phases of PLM. An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is employed as the service-based integration and communication infrastructure. Three exemplary scenarios are introduced to describe the benefits of using an ESB as compared to alternative PLM infrastructures. Furthermore, we introduce a service hierarchy to enable value-added services to enhance PLM functionality.