Häufig gestellte Fragen
What is the difference between PLM and ERP?
PLM and ERP handle two different but closely intertwined data worlds: PLM is responsible for technical product development with design data, specifications, revision states and the engineering bill of materials, while the ERP handles the commercial and logistical side such as purchasing, materials planning, production and financial accounting. In practice, the central handover point is usually the bill of materials: once a design is released, item numbers, materials and structures flow from the PLM into the ERP's materials management. Both systems maintain master data at different levels of detail, which is why a PLM is not an ERP replacement and vice versa. Only the interplay via a defined interface ensures that engineering and production work on consistent data.
Do I need PLM in addition to my ERP?
If you develop your own products with several design engineers, CAD data and multi-level bills of materials, a PLM system usually makes sense, because ERP systems can only represent technical engineering data, revision states and design relationships to a limited extent. Pure traders or contract manufacturers without their own design department, on the other hand, often get by with the ERP alone. As a rule of thumb, the higher the product complexity and the more intensive the technical change management, the more a dedicated PLM is justified. The decision should be guided by the real business processes rather than a mere feature list.
How do PLM and PDM differ?
PDM (product data management) focuses on storing, organising and versioning design and CAD data and is aimed primarily at engineers and designers. PLM takes a more comprehensive approach and looks at the entire product lifecycle, from the idea through design, manufacturing and service to decommissioning. PDM can be understood as a subset of PLM: a working product data management system often forms the technical foundation on which PLM processes and the connection to ERP, MES or configurators are built. Put simply, PDM manages the data, while PLM additionally governs the company-wide processes across the lifecycle.
Who runs PLM in the company - engineering or IT?
Responsibility for the content usually lies with the design department or engineering, since this is where product data, bills of materials and changes are created and released. IT typically handles technical operations, maintaining the interfaces to ERP and CAD, and administering permissions. In practice, the exact split varies by industry, company size and the integration depth of the specific setup. What matters is clarifying data ownership early on - that is, who maintains which data as the leading source - to avoid later conflicts between engineering and IT.
How does the integration of PLM and ERP via the bill of materials work?
At the centre of the integration is the transfer of the engineering bill of materials: the EBOM created in the PLM is handed over to the ERP after release, where it serves as the basis for the manufacturing bill of materials (MBOM), requirements planning and procurement. This handover is demanding because the ERP data model is designed for production and materials planning and can only represent revisions and complex engineering information to a limited extent. A clean, released BOM basis and a defined, ideally bidirectional interface prevent duplicate maintenance effort and contradictory data states. Engineering change management additionally ensures that technical changes are passed on to the ERP in a controlled and traceable manner.
Which PLM vendors lead the market?
Across industries, Siemens Teamcenter, PTC Windchill and the Dassault Systemes solutions around the 3DEXPERIENCE platform with ENOVIA are considered the market-leading PLM platforms; in current market assessments for large discrete manufacturers, Siemens is frequently credited with the largest revenue share. Alongside these, there are other established vendors such as Aras as well as numerous smaller and specialised solutions, including PLM modules integrated into CAD suites and PLM functions within larger enterprise software. These figures should be read as a rough market orientation and can differ depending on the survey, industry and region - in broader PLM and engineering surveys, other vendors come out ahead depending on how the market is delimited. Which vendor fits depends less on market position than on product complexity, design methodology, CAD integration and the existing ERP strategy.