A benchmarking framework for product lifecycle management (PLM) maturity models

Product lifecycle management (PLM) is increasingly important for organizations acting in dynamic and competitive markets since PLM can improve decision-making and reduce costs by taking advantage of the efficiencies and effectiveness coming from improved market intelligence and collaboration of partners. In the last years, academics as well as practitioners and consultants have developed a wide range of maturity models for the purpose of measuring and describing certain aspects of PLM "maturity". The PLM maturity models permit to assess the relative position of companies on their road to complete PLM implementation. However, it is a tough job for the company to select the most appropriate PLM maturity model, as each maturity model has different attributes. Since, to our knowledge, no benchmarking for PLM maturity models exists to date, the rising number of maturity models implicates problems with respect to retrievability and reusability. With the aim to enhance the time consuming and exhausting search and selection process of appropriate assessment models, a benchmarking framework for PLM maturity models is presented in this paper.