How to Find Best Books, Blogs, and Other Resources about Product Lifecycle Management in 2022?

Ask two engineers about something and you can easily end up with three (or sometimes more) opinions about how to solve the problem. I’m often getting questions about where to read about product lifecycle management, what are blogs, books, social media accounts, and other valuable resources about PLM. This always reminds me of my time back in 2008 when I thought that starting a blog about PLM can help me to share my knowledge about engineering and manufacturing software. It was more than a decade since that time and blogs and social networks took the world of information sharing.

PLM terminology can be confusing sometimes too. The engineering and manufacturing software community is well known for disagreement about names, terminology, and buzzwords. Just to mention a few – computer-aided design, engineering data, document management, product data management, collaborative product definition management, PLM software, product lifecycle, development process management, PLM systems, business processes, business process systems and now becoming digital twin, digital thread, and product value chain and many other names.

The ways to share knowledge are changing too. Books, blogs, social networks, messaging, and micro-blogging. Today, I want to share links and resources that can help you to learn more about product lifecycle management – people, blogs, books, websites, and links.

Blogs about PLM

Helena Guitierrez wrote an excellent article listing the top 12 PLM blogs to read. Check them out and thanks for mentioning my blog there. I highly recommend Jos Voskuil’s blog – Virtual Dutchman for a long time. Share PLM blog is great and it is always inspiring about best change management practices. PLM Stack is a very good blog from Yoann Maingon with a great passion for PLM technology.

Books About PLM

Bill of Materials is a foundation of PLM. Therefore, I recommend you a few basics “must read” about Bill of Materials management – 5 Books to start your PLM education.

Here are my top 3 must-read PLM books- Product Lifecycle Management: A Digital Journey Using Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) by Uthayan Elangovan; Product Lifecycle Management: 21st Century Paradigm for Product Realisation by John Stark; Engineering Documentation Control Handbook: Configuration Management and Product Lifecycle Management by Frank B. Watts.

My favorite book about the modern future of PLM is Martin Eigner‘s – System Lifecycle Management: Engineering Digitalization (Engineering 4.0).

Social Networks

Social networks are like a bar. When the crowd got tired of a bar, they move to another one. At various times, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn were popular places to search for information about PLM. While most of the information can be found in all places, in 2022 LinkedIn would be my recommendation for the professional community related to industrial software and PLM. The main advantage is that you can search for people and companies you’re looking after.

PLM Companies and Service Provides

PLM software vendors and services companies these days put a great amount of work in social media. Here are some of them with actively supported blogs – Autodesk PLM blog, Duro PLM blog, OpenBOM Blog, Oracle Supply Chain Management blog, Prolim Blog, Propel PLM Blog, PTC Arena blog, Razorleaf Blog, SAP Blogs, Zerowaitstate PLM blog.

Analysts and Research

Here are a few analyst companies focused on the PLM software business. I recommend you follow them. CIMdata blog and research. I also recommend subscribing to the CIMdata PLM news weekly newsletter. Tech-Clarity by Jim Brown. Lifecycle Insight by Chad Jackson. For information about company finance and business, follow Monica Schnitger and her Schnitger Corp blog. For business analysis, I recommend you follow Jay Vleeschhouwer of Griffin Securities.

What is my conclusion?

The product lifecycle management world is fascinating and interesting. The best way to learn about the product development process, product lifecycle, PLM software as well as how to design and build products, you need to connect and follow people working in this space. This is the best and fastest way to learn about PLM systems and PLM solutions. Just my thoughts…

PS. If you know a good PLM resource that I didn’t mention in my article, please share it with me.

Best, Oleg

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing a digital cloud-native PDM and PLM platform that manages product data and connects manufacturers, construction companies, and their supply chain networks. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.