A decade ago, engineers still were talking about using computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) simply to replace old-fashioned blueprints. Now its successor, product lifecycle management (PLM) software, is driving the entire vehicle development process. "Without PLM, you would not have the number of launches or proliferation of models today," says Richard Gerth, a research scientist with the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, MI. "PLM is not CAD; it's not CAM; it's not analysis; it's not resource planning and it's not product-data management," says Paul Zang, professor of mechanical engineering at Kettering University in Flint, MI. "PLM ties all processes together into a kind of mother of all processes."
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