Product Life Cycle
PLM or Product Life Cycle Management integrates people, data, processes and business systems and provides a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprise.
'Product lifecycle management' (PLM) should be distinguished from 'Product life cycle management (marketing)' (PLCM). PLM describes the engineering aspect of a product, from managing descriptions and properties of a product through its development and useful life; whereas, PLCM refers to the commercial management of life of a product in the business market with respect to costs and sales measures.
Product lifecycle management is one of the four cornerstones of a corporation's information technology structure. All companies need to manage communications and information with their customers (CRM-Customer Relationship Management), their suppliers (SCM-Supply Chain Management), their resources within the enterprise (ERP-Enterprise Resource Planning) and their planning (SDLC-Systems Development Life Cycle). In addition, manufacturing engineering companies must also develop, describe, manage and communicate information about their products.
(Source: wikipedia)

