Successful change management in PLM

Mastering the connections between roles, processes, data and tools

Whether internal or external, the reasons for the need for change in PLM are as varied as they are complex. Flexible, transparent and comprehensible change management is essential to ensure that companies can quickly realise optimisation potential and react efficiently to constantly changing requirements and circumstances.

The requirements for change management are becoming increasingly complex, especially in PLM. Changes cannot be avoided; in fact, they will often continue to increase due to the expanded PLM sphere of influence and the associated product complexity.

The most important reasons for changes

In addition to the typical technical changes in design, feedback from production also needs to be implemented in order to optimise processes or structures for assembly and production. However, external developments such as changing customer requirements, market changes, changes in suppliers or new technologies and changes in legislation also require a functioning change management system within the company.

Three central challenges

Because the PLM's sphere of influence on roles, processes, data and tools is increasingly expanding, linear processes often result in complex interrelationships and dependencies. In contrast to the past, successful change management in PLM is no longer possible without tool support. The three typical challenges that arise when making changes in PLM are

1. increasing object interdependencies

The PLM sphere of influence is constantly growing, which also increases the amount of data or data object types and the complexity of the entire product data network.

2 Comprehensive processes

As the PLM sphere of influence grows, more and more roles and tasks are involved in the change management process. This network also needs to be managed efficiently.

3 Cross-tool data flows

The expansion of the PLM area often means that more and more role-specific tools are involved, which further increases the number of interfaces and thus the complexity of change management.

Three typical change process scenarios

Continuous change management can be implemented with various process scenarios - depending on the initial situation and requirements:

1. Distributed processes

The processes run in the various systems involved and are synchronized where necessary. The advantage: The process runs in the respective known (role-specific) tools. The disadvantage: Process synchronization is complex and data and process relationships are difficult to represent transparently.

2. Dominant process

The process is controlled from one system and sub-processes are initiated in other tools. The advantage: Existing tools are used in a common process. The disadvantage: Users also have to work with "foreign" tools, which increases internal complexity.

3. Overarching processes

The local change processes are left in the respective tools and an overarching process is created that is controlled from an app/external process. The advantage: Transparency and knowledge of the common change process are high. The disadvantage: Another tool is introduced that has to be compared with the existing tools.


The ongoing expansion of the PLM sphere of influence leads to an increasing complexity of roles, processes, data and tools - and thus also to greater challenges for change management. This makes a clear, jointly defined process that takes into account the relevant data dependencies from the tools involved without restricting their function all the more important. One good solution, for example, is a comprehensive app that aggregates all information on one platform and thus makes it available to all roles.

PLM Open Hour

Change management in PLM

In this Open Hour, we addressed the following questions:

• What does change management in PLM mean?
• How has change management in PLM changed over the years?
• What new challenges does change management bring with it?

Click through the presentation here (in German):

Watch the webinar recording «Service-orientated PLM architecture. Register here: