Product Data Management

The challenge is to maximize the time-to-market benefits of concurrent engineering while maintaining control of your product-related data throughout the enterprise and distributing that data automatically to the right personnel at the right time and in the right form.

The way PDM systems cope with this challenge is that product master data is held only once in a secure 'vault' where its integrity can be assured and all changes to it monitored, controlled and recorded.

Within PDM the focus is on managing and tracking the creation, change, operation, maintenance and archive of all product related data. The information being stored and managed will include engineering data such as Computer-aided Design (CAD) models, drawings and their associated documentation.

More specifically the typical product information managed through its development and useful life include:

• Part Number
• Part Description
• Supplier/Vendor
• Vendor Part Number and Description
• Unit of Measure
• Cost/Price
• Schematic or CAD Drawing
• Material Data Sheets

A PDM solution will also:

• Control check-in and check-out of the product data to multi-user

• Carry out engineering change management and release control on all versions/issues of components in a product
• Build and manipulate the product structure Bill of Materials (BOM) for assemblies
• Assist in configuration management of product variants.

Another great gain with product data management is that it also improves communication and cooperation and forms the basis for organizations to restructure their product-development processes and institute initiatives such as concurrent engineering and collaborative product development. The result is faster work, greater cooperation, less redundancy, fewer errors, and smoother work flow, which translates into bottom-line cost savings and time reductions.

SE PDM is a fully integrated, automated product management software tool that collects and centralizes your product's data, brings together all of your stakeholders and gives you advanced reporting capability. It provides the technology and processes you need to capture and manage consistent, accurate and reliable data about your products.

SE PDM will streamline the most tedious and time-consuming aspects of your product management , reinforce your decision-making with facts and connect all of your stakeholders to a centralized information loop.

SE PDM is designed to leverage proven business processes, industry best practices and global product compliance with specific industry language and terminology.

The versatility of SE PDM makes the employment of the product data management throughout the organization possible as it offers a complete end-to-end solution to manage all aspects of a product's lifecycle, as well as enabling the organization to control the enormous amount of electronic documents that they produce.

Most importantly, enables organizations to improve overall quality, and reduce costs and risks associated with a growing number of regulatory compliance and corporate governance processes such as those related to the ISO 9000 Quality Guidelines, Sarbanes-Oxley, FDA 21CFR Part 11 Electronic Record Keeping, Good Manufacturing Practices, OSHA Regulations, and others.

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• SE PDM can be tailored to your organization's unique data requirements and business processes. It operates on multiple platforms and heterogeneous operating systems.
• Support for unlimited product types, product attributes and specs, categories and subcategories, product images, product relationships, and more.
• Ensure product definitions of the highest integrity and accuracy.
• Customize data quality routines to meet your company's inventory or product nomenclature and protocols.
• Provide information on standard components and facilitates reuse of designs.
• Provide work break-down structures and allows coordination between product-related processes, resource scheduling, and project tracking.
• Support role-based access control in order to ensure that only authorized personnel can access or change product information.
• Ensure that everyone is working from the most current data.
• Reduction in documentation re-work with more effective reviews and electronic sign offs.
• Support for any file format (pdf, MSD sheets, audio, video, cad drawings, office, etc.).
• User friendly web interface that allows multiple users to view and manage product data.
• Real-time inventory control and usage & maintenance reports.
• Complete control and flexibility for managing your products and suppliers.
• Automatic notification capabilities to inform, remind or alert user, when a product has been modified or its status changed.
• Track and manage all changes to product related data.
• Tracking of every event performed in the system as well as who did what and when, and how and why each change was made in any product record.
• Accelerate ROI with easy setup.
• Spend less time organizing and tracking design data.
• Improve productivity through reuse of product design data.
• Workflow functions that enable users to become active participants in product development, design reviews, engineering change orders, approvals and other product-related processes. Automatic notifications prompt users on actions required at specific stages.
• Fully integrated workflow, issue control and escalation functionality.
• Access to product/part information including change history, manufacturer and supplier part numbers, authorized suppliers, and other product related information.
• Knows exactly what products are available and how they are used.
• Support for work-flow and process management that controls procedures for handling product data and provides a mechanism to drive a business with information.
• Interfaces to external systems including manufacturing, CAD, CAE and SDE systems.
• Integration with Microsoft Active Directory.
• Integration with ERP systems, even in multi-company and multi-site environments.
• Maintains an extensive audit trail of all activities performed in the system, which is essential for regulatory compliance.
• Provides powerful search capabilities which allow users to instantly list and link to products by category, manufacturer, maintenance or warranty expiration, and many other fields.
• All historical information on each product is made available on-line.
• Supports electronic signatures mandated by the FDA Title 21 CFR Part 11.
• Runs on all major operating systems and databases such as Windows, Linux, Oracle, MS SQL Server, and Firebird.

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