An empirical analysis of the PLM implementation effects in the aerospace industry

The provision of an effective IT support to product development processes still remains an open research question, because of the complexity that is inherent to this area of corporate activity. According to the current state of the art, product lifecycle management (PLM) systems can be considered as important enablers for achieving true coordination and effective management of product development processes. However, few contributions in literature investigate the central issue of understanding how company implementation approaches can mutually interact and can determine the actual effects of PLM introduction. The paper presents a framework for representing PLM implementation effects at three different levels (individual, organizational, and strategic) jointly to an empirical investigation in a major Italian aerospace company.