Product Data Management (PDM)

Last updated: July 20, 2023

Technology and methodology used within an enterprise to identify, organize, access, maintain, and control data related to its products. Product data management is applied over the complete life cycle of the object, and has the following objectives:

To identify and maintain the make-up (configuration) of objects.
To identify and maintain all object data and documents related to the object, and/or manage the creation of object data.
To manage orderly change to a object in terms of its configuration and associated object data.
To provide optimum and controlled access to object data by business processes.

Product data management consists of three disciplines:

Configuration Management, which:
- Identifies the object configuration and associated object data,
- Manages controlled and orderly change to object configuration and object data,
- Reports on the configuration and data status of the object, and
- Verifies integrity of data and documents through audit.
Document Management, which manages associated processes and infrastructure, to provide secure and controlled receipt, storage, access, maintenance, and distribution/ promulgation of all data sets associated with the object.
Work Management, which manages the work that persons and organizational units perform when creating, maintaining, and changing object configurations and associated object data.

See also CHANGE, CONFIGURATION, CONFIGURATION CONTROL, CONFIGURATION IDENTIFICATION, CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT, CONFIGURATION STATUS ACCOUNTING, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT, ENTERPRISE, ORGANIZATIONAL UNIT, PERSON, OBJECT, OBJECT DATA, and WORK MANAGEMENT.