According to AMR Research, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) has seen significant growth over the last few years in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) and pharmaceutical industries.

What is PLM? In its simplest terms, PLM encompasses the management of all product-related information throughout the entire product lifecycle.  Practically speaking, it deals with the application of technologies to support and streamline new product development and introduction.

Why all the recent interest in PLM among CPG, Cosmetic and pharmaceutical firms?  There are two main drivers.  First, companies realize that they can’t stay competitive conducting formula development via a haphazard, non-collaborative, spreadsheet-and-paper approach with no version control, no revision history, no central knowledge base and massive re-keying of data into downstream MRP systems.

Second, they’ve concluded that the ongoing health of their business is strongly tied to the benefits that PLM provides:

• More rapid innovation and reduced time-to-market

• Lower development costs

• Reduced raw material costs

• Faster product introductions

• Higher quality