A QFD based methodology for evaluating a company's PDM requirements for collaborative product development

CAD, CAM, CAE and CIM systems with their ability to quickly generate and change product data have strained the conventional systems used to manage data. As a result, the time spent by an engineer in looking for the right information far exceeds the time spent on the actual design work. A product data management system is a tool that helps engineers and others manage both data and the product development process, and hence support a concurrent engineering framework in a company. Although PDM systems provide numerous benefits to a company, there are problems associated with firstly identifying an appropriate system for a company and then in its implementation. For a successful implementation of a PDM system it is important for a company to first evaluate its requirements. This paper proposes a QFD (quality function deployment) based methodology for evaluating a company's current status vis-à-vis PDM implementation.