PDM, PLM, and PIM—a few considerations

In a recent post (one of my most popular), I gave a very short answer to the question of whether PDM and PIM are the same thing. The answer was a resounding "NO". Let's elaborate on this a bit further.

Historically, product management (PM) meant mostly engineering data. In fact, PM was seen as a common layer shared across engineers and manufacturers to translate data from one domain to another. Engineers would provide classifications and attributes for components and materials to support the growing need of manufacturers to standardization by identifying similar components/materials, eliminating redundancy, and establishing a preferred parts list. The data would also be available to R&D and QA, for example.
These particular processes along with version control are part of Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) discipline which includes PDM. More specifically, PDM is a capability to "reliably capture and maintain the definition of a product and related data through all phases of a product's life within the context of PLM." (Gartner)

The four most commonly used PDM applications are:

• Library functions such as search and file check-in/check-out (version management) 
• Management of Bill of Materials (BOM).
• Product configuration management.
• Engineering change management.

Notably, PDM is not a single product within PLM, though its use is within the context of PLM (and not any other application domain within the business).

As implied, PLM is clearly a broader discipline than PDM. In fact, PLM is a "technology-enabled discipline that supports the processes necessary to create, evolve and support product families from idea through retirement." (Gartner). As a result, PLM enables companies to manage the life-cycle of a product across different functions, i.e. from engineering to manufacturing, purchasing, order management, service and sometimes support. 

Aptly, Gartner defines the following five key processes as part of a PLM solution:

1. Product Strategy creation. Creating product strategy to continuously cultivate portfolios of product that generate business growth.
2. Planning.  Planning the development programs that bring products to idea to reality
3. Product Life Cycle. Activities to keep actual financial investments and invested time to plan and guide products to deliver the greatest business benefit, including analytics to diagnose and address setbacks.
4. Content Creation. Capturing, controlling, and communicating product-related content. Clearly, PDM plays a large role in these activities.
5. Collaboration. Providing the set of tools to create product-related content and collaborate with partners including suppliers and customers. Computer-aided development (CAD) tools can and often do play a role within this segment of PLM.

Finally, PIM is, as I have repeated ad nauseam, a set of business processes to deal with all the relevant* product-related information, including sales, marketing, and merchandising. Thus, PIM assists the creation of a full view (some may say a 360 view) of product data that may feed sales channel, analytics tools, and transactional systems (e.g. ERP). 

Let's try to glue everything together. I borrowed the following diagram to show simplified relationships among the business application domains (the original article is here - recommended):

Note that the relationship between PDM, PLM and PIM has to be tempered and revised based on the business and data requirements and the constraing imposed by the "as-is" state.

From a customer perspective, PLM is more a strategy than a single product (in fact, be aware of vendors who claim to have "a complete PLM solution").
On the other hand, PDM is a product (and yes, it's a commodity) that sits within a PLM strategy. What about PIM? Depending on the industry, PIM can either be a standalone business application or a complementary discipline within the PLM space. Granted, some PIM vendors can stretch their solution to include "elements" of PLM and/or PDM, blurring the line between the two.
However, this does not affect the fact that they are two separate products and as such with their own
domain of influence.

*It's very important not to burden the PIM platform with ALL the product attributes that the organization needs. This deserves more space to be illustrated. Hopefully, an idea for a future post.