Agile Product Lifecycle Management (Agile(tm) PLM) solutions help companies accelerate revenue, reduce costs, improve quality, ensure compliance, and drive innovation throughout the product lifecycle. With a broad suite of best practice, enterprise class PLM solutions and time-to-value focused implementations, Agile helps companies get the most from their products. Building on a proven track record of improved product profitability at nearly 1,200 global companies, Agile PLM provides comprehensive support for the product lifecycle business processes, platform, and integration requirements of complex enterprises. Uniquely built from the ground up for the networked business, Agile enables a single enterprise view of the product record, across the extended enterprise. Agile PLM is comprised of a set of solutions that are targeted at specific business process improvement initiatives embraced by manufacturers seeking to enhance productivity around program management, product introduction, portfolio management, engineering and design, direct materials sourcing, and product service. These modules are complementary and can be purchased as required by investment focus. Typically, Product Collaboration is the base module deployed by a customer. The Agile 9 PLM modules are:

Agile Product Collaboration / Product Data Management. Agile Product Collaboration manages product information including bills of material, documentation, engineering and manufacturing changes, configurations, and mechanical, electrical and software design and analysis databases, providing visibility to this information throughout the extended enterprise and streamlining the product development and delivery process.

Agile Product Portfolio Management. Agile Product Portfolio Management manages program, project and product information across the product lifecycle. This enables organizations to optimize resource allocation, product investment and program execution decisions by assessing key performance indicators such as schedule, cost and past portfolio financial performance.

Agile Product Cost Management. Agile Product Cost Management provides product cost intelligence between internal design and sourcing functions on the one hand and external supplier and partners on the other hand, and is used to streamline the direct materials sourcing process. Using Agile Product Cost Management, customers can plan and manage critical cost, commercial terms and other key product information early and throughout the product lifecycle. This enables users to achieve product total cost goals by promoting the use of preferred suppliers, aggregating demand across multiple organizations for greater buying power, and sharing product information across the supply chain.

Agile Product Service & Improvement. Agile Product Service & Improvement integrates customer, product, quality and regulatory information with the product record in order to track and rapidly address product quality issues. Using Agile Product & Service Improvement, customers are able to drive proactive product quality improvement and lower the costs (warranty and service expenses) associated with quality issues.

Agile Product Governance & Compliance. Agile Product Governance & Compliance enables organizations to manage product and program compliance against internal and external standards and regulatory requirements, providing assurance of effective compliance throughout the product lifecycle.

Agile Product Catalog. Agile Product Catalog provides a central repository for storing and aggregating technical product information, including specifications, parts, documents and CAD files, and product attributes. Through components classification, information can be classified, making easy to find and reuse for initiatives such as data exchange between customers and suppliers or developing marketing and sales programs and collateral.

Agile Requirements Management. Agile Requirements Management facilitates the requirements management and product planning processes by linking customers, sales, marketing, engineering, and manufacturing more closely, and providing a single, unified environment to capture and manage product requirements and data. Agile Requirements Management helps companies ensure that the actual product meets the specifications of the original product plan.

Agile Configuration Management. Agile Configuration Management extends core configuration management capabilities by providing configuration control linked to serial numbers that is integrated with the change identification and management process. Agile Configuration Management enables manufacturers of complex, heavily regulated or highly customizable products, such as Aerospace & Defense suppliers, to ensure that the product delivered meets the customer's exact specifications. It also ensures that each unique configuration can be tracked and identified.

Agile Maintenance Repair & Overhaul. Agile Maintenance Repair and Overhaul enables manufacturers to plan and execute maintenance, repair and overhaul activities, providing an electronic audit trail between the "as-delivered" product and the current in-service configuration. Fully integrated with Agile PLM solutions, Agile Maintenance Repair & Overhaul links change activities and facilitates feedback between engineering, production, sales/marketing and field service personnel.

Agile Engineering Collaboration. Agile Engineering Collaboration manages the complex design databases created by mechanical CAD, electronic CAD and design automation, software configuration management, and document authoring tools within the context of the Product Record ensuring that the correct version of the product design is being used at all times across the organization. Moreover, rich product information is made available to people outside of engineering through easy-to-use visualization and collaboration tools eliminating the need for paper drawings and documentation.

The Agile PLM Platform. The Agile PLM Platform consists of a scalable, Internet-standards based set of components upon which the modules described above are built upon. The Agile PLM platform is also used to extend the base capabilities of the Agile PLM solutions enabling organizations to adapt the product to specific business needs. The following components make up the Agile PLM Platform:

Agile User Interface Framework. The Agile UI Framework leverages configurable, prepackaged portlets to deliver content or services within customer portals. Portlets expose key services and user interface components in the Agile PLM platform as standard services that can be embedded seamlessly into a corporate or exchange portal. These portlets comply with industry standards and are certified with leading portal technologies, including IBM Websphere, to enable 'plug and play' integration.

Agile Integration Framework. The Agile Integration Framework provides a comprehensive set of capabilities to enable integration between Agile PLM applications and other applications including MRP, ERP, CRM and internally developed business systems. Leveraging Internet standards such as XML and messaging as the primary vehicle for system-to-system communication enables rapid deployment of integrations and also reduces the overhead associated with ongoing maintenance. Standard adapters for systems such as SAP and J.D. Edwards are available and with partners offering several of their own system adaptors.

Agile Analytics Framework. Agile Analytics Framework provides a single point of access for all reporting functionality, including ad-hoc querying of the product record. Users can generate new reports from within Agile PLM without requiring a separate reporting application. Agile roles and discovery privileges enforce robust access control and data security.

Agile Content Framework. The Agile Content Framework links the product record in real-time to component information dispersed throughout the supply chain enabling evaluation and consolidation of manufacturer, enterprise and supplier information obtained from dispersed sources for optimal decision making throughout the product lifecycle. Component, Bill of Material and Approved Manufacturer / Vendor List data can be analyzed, cleansed, and mapped to consolidate product information coming from multiple sources like component catalogs into a usable asset for the engineering and sourcing organizations.

Agile Common Services. Agile PLM solutions are built on a common services oriented architecture (Agile Common Services), which offers tremendous flexibility and ease of administration. The use of common services minimizes configuration and maintenance and provides consistency across applications. Key components of the services architecture are electronic workflow, event subscription and notification, directory service integration (e.g., LDAP), advanced document handling, full text search, advanced security, and support for global localization requirements.