Product Lifecycle Management: a new software in order to standardize the way of working in Prima Industrie

The thesis tells about a project developed during the internship at Prima Industrie. The focus of the work is on the development of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), a software in order to manage all information of a product from the concept to the delivery. The project has the purpose of implementing the software in three product units of the group. Each plant has a different way to handle product data. During the project a Bottom Up strategy has been followed in order to give the decision power to the future key users of the PLM. In this way, my rule has been to collect data about the current way of managing product information in each plants and map the procedures through process cards in order to keep an high level of detail since the complexity of the processes. Moreover, I was in charge to find a solution with the support of the Project Manager and to design the workflows of the processes through a new process cards. The thesis is structured as follows: •??The first chapter gives an introduction of all types of information system. There is a description of the principal systems involved in a factory , in this way it is possible to anticipate the rule of some systems that transfer information to PLM. Moreover, there is a general description of the PLM, its function and its benefits. •??The second chapter inform about the general data about Prima Industrie, its organization, history, products and innovations. •??The third chapter describes the project, it is useful to explain the planning, the objectives and organization and each aspects useful for the project development. •??The fourth chapter describes all information collected about the current processes in the product units. The focus is on the main processes: classification, management of the different configuration of the bill of material, Item Release and change management. Many processes are represented through process cards. •??The fifth chapter describes the process solutions by comparing the different workflows of the plants and showing the pros and cons of them. Moreover, in this chapter process cards are useful to represent the new workflows. •?? Last chapter shows the benefits of the implementation of a PLM, for example in term of time.