The metamorphosis of drawing management in design and production ecosystems, since the early days of simple CAD data management, has been nothing short of astounding. While it used to be only about storing and finding CAD data, it soon evolved into the ability to connect drawings, documents, and bills of materials and to put them into context with information from ERP systems – marking the step from drawing management to CAD data management to Product Data Management (PDM system).
As this was happening, sometime in the 1990s electronic archiving and document management systems (DMS) started to gain momentum in commercial departments and product-centric companies required the ability to store and manage product related data and documents and match it to their product structure, hence a new form of DMS evolved, DMStec . Companies looking to work seamlessly with product relevant data and documents across department lines will also have to bridge the gap to Product Data Management (PDM) systems. This will give them a unified Product Data Backbone that covers both business related and technical documents. The next step on the evolutionary path is process control of product data and information flows. These types of systems are known as product lifecycle management (PLM) systems.
