A Holistic Management Model for Manufacturing Companies and Related IT Support

Life cycle and management concepts are a necessity to compete in current turbulent markets. Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) struggle when realizing such concepts and accordant IT support. In this paper we review different concepts and their similarities and differences are discussed. We focus on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Supply Chain Management and Factory Lifecycle Management to integrate them into a holistic management model. Subsequently, we extend a service-based PLM architecture to support the holistic management model to continuously support processes. The usage of standardized technologies allows companies, and especially SMEs, to implement this architecture with low costs and effort.