Modern products are created by distributed teams, built through multi-tier supply chains, changed repeatedly after release, and governed by strict quality and regulatory rules. Without a structured PLM process, change becomes chaos.
This guide breaks the PLM process into eight typical stages that often work in parallel and explains how they connect to create a digital thread across product development. For a more visually friendly learning experience, check out videos for the PLM process here.
What is the PLM Process?
The PLM process is a structured framework for managing a product from its initial requirements through design, review, change, and ongoing evolution.
It can be typically organized into several stages that work together as a closed-loop system:
- Specify Requirements
- New Design
- Design Review
- Issue Management
- Manage Documents
- Engineering Change
- Control Change
- Implement Changes
Why the PLM Process Matters?
The PLM process builds a structure around what’s being built, why it’s being built, and how changes are controlled, especially when many teams and suppliers are involved. Essentially, a structured PLM process exists to control complexity and reduce risk, so that requirements don’t drift, the wrong versions aren’t manufactured, and change doesn’t become chaos.
This closed-loop system enables closed-loop engineering where data and feedback from downstream stages (manufacturing, quality, and real-world product use) are constantly fed back into the engineering design process. It supports continuous product improvement, faster engineering change cycles with strong alignment between design and real-world performance.
Who Benefits from the PLM Process?
A structured PLM process benefits any role involved in creating, changing, supporting, governing products, which includes engineering, manufacturing, quality, regulatory, supply chain, operations, service team, as well as leadership.
The 8 Core PLM Process Stages Explained
1. Specify Product Requirements
What it is:
Capturing, structuring, and maintaining product requirements and specifications so teams can design against a shared source of truth.
Problem it solves:
Unclear or scattered requirements, requirements drift over time, and no traceability between what was requested and what was delivered.
Inputs:
- Stakeholder needs and specifications
- Existing requirement docs (Word/Excel)
Outputs:
- Structured specification and Traceable requirement
How ENOVIA supports:
ENOVIA allows teams to import and create structured requirements with rich content and full traceability across the lifecycle.
ENOVIA Specification Manager
Read the full guide to Requirements Management in PLM.
2. Create and Define the Product Design
What it is:
Creating new CAD product definition and connecting design data to PLM controls.
Problem it solves:
Engineers overwriting files or using wrong versions, hard-to-find parts
Inputs:
- Approved requirements (from Stage 1)
- CAD templates/standards
Outputs:
- CAD models
- Product definition
- Revision-managed design ready for review
How ENOVIA supports:
ENOVIA integrates with leading 3D CAD software and connects design workflows.
Check out the design workflow of different CAD system: CATIA V5, 3DEXPERIENCE CATIA, and SOLIDWORKS.
3. Design Review
What it is:
Conducting structured, cross-functional (often non-CAD users) reviews of CAD data and metadata to validate correctness, completeness, and readiness.
Problems it solves:
Late discovery of design errors, scattered feedback and review processes limited to CAD users only.
Inputs:
- CAD models and metadata (from Stage 2)
- Requirements (from Stage 1)
Outputs:
- Review feedback captured as markups
- Issue created from markups
How ENOVIA supports:
Enables both CAD and non-CAD users to efficiently view, analyze, and manage 3D CAD data, so teams can resolve issues faster and enhance design quality.
ENOVIA Design Review Markup
Dive deep with this guide on how to review designs with ENOVIA.
4. Issue Management
What it is:
Capturing, assigning, tracking, and resolving product issues. PLM supports issue visualization and linkage to change actions.
Problems it solves:
Issues are tracked in spreadsheets with no context, no ownership, and fixes are made without linking back to the original issue.
Inputs:
- Issues created from markup (from Stage 3)
- Supporting evidence
Outputs:
- Assigned issues with status tracking change action created when modification is needed.
How ENOVIA supports:
Issues are represented as pins in a 3D geometry context with previews, store properties, linked CAD context, and attachments. You can assign ownership and create a change action.
ENOVIA Issue Management
Learn more details on Issue Management in PLM.
5. Documents Management
What it is:
Managing documents that govern product definition and compliance under controlled revision and ownership to keep the team aligned with the latest approved information.
Problems it solves:
Scattered files, no standardized naming or revision logic, and teams relying on outdated or unapproved documentation.
Inputs:
- Local files.
- Related objects such as issues, change actions, and CAD data
Outputs:
- Version-controlled documents with metadata
- Organized document structures
How ENOVIA supports:
ENOVIA provides efficient storage, editing, and collaboration on documents.
ENOVIA Structured Document Manager
Read through this blog on the capabilities of document management in PLM.
6. Engineering Changes
What it is:
Formally initiating and managing engineering change, so revisions are controlled, reviewed, and approved through a structured workflow.
Problems it solves:
Silent changes made without approval, no consistent change ownership, no linkage between issues and implemented fixes.
Inputs:
- Issues requirement modification (from Stage 4)
- Proposed updated CAD, docs, or requirements
Outputs:
- Change action with assigned roles, linked issues and attached supporting info, released updates once approved.
How ENOVIA supports:
ENOVIA enables teams to initiate changes from multiple locations, assign roles, link issues to changes, and have approvers review.
Check out more capabilities of how ENOVIA manage engineering changes.
7. Control Change
What it is:
Controlling working conditions, ensuring design edits happen only under authorized change context, then freezing items before approval, so the submitted state is stable.
Problems it solves:
Unauthorized edits, approval of data that changes afterwards.
Inputs:
- Change action (from Stage 6)
- CAD objects requiring modification
Outputs:
- Modified items under the change action
- Frozen items ready for approval, full traceability
How ENOVIA supports:
ENOVIA ensures changes to CAD objects are made with full authorization and under controlled conditions.
ENOVIA Change Management dashboard
Learn more about how ENOVIA helps control changes.
8. Implement Change
What it is:
Implementing approved changes across structures and revisions.
Problems it solves:
Rework caused by updating assemblies only in CAD, confusion over which revision is used where, and non-CAD stakeholders were blocked from implementing structural updates.
Inputs:
- Approved change action
- Frozen/released items (from Stage 6 and 7).
Outputs:
- Updated/released product structure
- New baseline for the next design iteration.
How ENOVIA supports:
ENOVIA tools, such as Product Release Engineer and Product Structure Editor, minimize rework when implementing change.
Learn more about this modular approach to Change Implementation in PLM.
How the 8 PLM Stages Work Together
Although the PLM process is illustrated as a sequence of stages, PLM does not operate as a simple, linear handoff, and the value of PLM comes from how consistently the stages work together over time.
In practice, these stages work together as a connected system. For example, requirements often evolve after design reviews. Issues discovered late can trigger new engineering changes, and released products continue to generate feedback that loops back upstream. Information moves backwards for improvement or forwards for execution.
Because multiple stages operate in parallel:
- Manufacturing and quality teams can review designs while engineering teams continue development.
- ERP and sourcing teams can plan to use early structures, while PLM governs change readiness.
- Production can continue releasing versions while new revisions are controlled upstream.
FAQs
What is the process of PLM?
The PLM process is a structured framework for managing a product from its initial requirements through design, review, change, and ongoing evolution. It is typically organized into eight connected stages: specify requirement, design and product definition, design review, issue management, document management, engineering change, change control, and change implementation. These stages work in parallel as a closed-loop system that enables closed-loop engineering where data and feedback from downstream stages (manufacturing, quality, and real-world product use) are constantly fed back into the engineering design process.
What is the difference between the PLM process and the process of PLM implementation?
The PLM process describes how products should be managed over their lifecycle. The PLM implementation process describes how an organization introduces PLM software and workflows to support that process.
What’s the difference between PLM, ERP and MES?
PLM manages requirements, designs, documents, and engineering changes. ERP manages materials, inventory, purchasing, costing, and production orders. MES executes work instructions, tracks production, and captures quality and performance data.
How Is the Manufacturing Process Integrated into PLM?
This is typically done by linking engineering product definition (EBOM) to manufacturing product structures (MBOM). You also need to define manufacturing processes and work instructions before production and ensure manufacturing processes are updated automatically when engineering changes occur.
This can be seamlessly achieved in the 3DEXPERIENCE ecosystem by using ENOVIA as the PLM backbone for product and change governance, and using DELMIA to define, simulate, and validate manufacturing processes before execution, and then passing production-ready data downstream to ERP and MES.
What’s the difference between Engineering Changes and Change Control in the PLM process?
Engineering Change is about deciding what should change and why. Change Control is about making sure changes are executed safely, correctly, and only when authorized.
How does PLM enable the Digital Thread, and what data does it connect?
PLM stages are connected through managed data objects: Requirements link to designs; Designs link to issues; Issues link to changes; Changes link to updated structures and documents; Released structures become the new system of record. This digital thread tracks the change across the product lifecycle, including what changed, why it changed, who approved it, when it became effective, and where it applies.
