Generic Modeling and Configuration Management in Product Lifecycle Management

The PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is often defined as a set of functions and procedures which allows one to manage and to exploit the data defining at the same time the products and the processes implemented for their developments. However, the installation of a PLM solution remains a difficult exercise taking into account the complexity and the diversity of the customer requirements as well as the transverse utilization of this solution in all the company’s’ functions. The issues faced by both editors and integrators of PLM applications arise from the specific aspect of customers’ projects, even tough most functional needs are often generic. In this paper we are focused on product modeling in PLM applications, more particularly on configuration management that traces product evolutions throughout its lifecycle. we will insist on the links between the configuration needs and the multi-view approach models and we release problems related to PLM applications deployment. Our work concerns the PLM generic solutions based on the concept of generic models. This generic model takes into account the configurations specification associated to the managed product and can be extended to cover specific needs