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Business Requirements
The business requires the ability to manage the definition, storage, organization and sharing of data generated during product and service development and throughout subsequent stages of the lifecycle.
According to SAP Reference Business Architecture, the Product and Service Lifecycle Management (PLM) business area comprises the following generic (cross-industry) capabilities (available to view in SAP Signavio Process Explorer or SAP LeanIX, under the Products & Services Enterprise Domain).
Business Capabilities
Business Process view
Solution Options
SAP’s product portfolio offers the following solutions which enable the Product Management capabilities (Product lifecycle management | SAP Help Portal
- SAP S/4HANA
- SAP Integrated Product Development
- SAP 3D Visual Enterprise – Author, Generator, Viewer
- SAP Teamcenter by Siemens
- PLM system integration for SAP S/4HANA
- SAP Engineering Control Center for SAP S/4HANA
- SAP product data management integration to SAP S/4HANA
- SAP Product Lifecycle Costing
In SAP centric landscapes S/4HANA core PLM capabilities continue to stay while customers can augment it with cloud-native SAP solutions and integrate it with leading third-party PLM platforms. However, moving forward the platform of innovations is the cloud-native SAP Integrated Product Development on BTP (SAP Business Technology Platform) with unified integration solution, which is specifically designed to foster a smooth and robust connection with leading third-party PLM platforms.
Characterization of the Solution Options
The brief description of the solutions below solely focuses on their PLM capabilities, it is not intended to detail the full scope of their functionality in this article.
For additional details please visit the SAP Supply Chain Management - PLM Portfolio Overview.
SAP S/4HANA
SAP S/4HANA contains all the standard core functionalities to support basic PLM foundation with mature capabilities to develop and industrialize products. SAP S/4HANA PLM remains a reliable system of record, inclusive of the direct CAD integration through SAP Engineering Control Center. SAP S/4HANA allows to manage product information holistically and efficiently across the complete lifecycle, ensuring end-to-end visibility from requirements to design to manufacturing to service, in both process and discrete industries.
The key capabilities of S/4HANA PLM are:
- Product Change Management - Orchestrate product changes in a standardized, flexible, and compliant way
- Authoring Tool Integration - Integrate mechanical, electrical, and electronic CAD authoring tools; synchronize metadata and structures
- Design Systems Interoperability - Integrate external product lifecycle management tools and SAP; synchronize metadata and structures
- Handover to Manufacturing - Deploy flexible manufacturing practices to initial product design, to improve quality, productivity, and agility.
- Model-Based Enterprise - Virtualize product models with drawings, manufacturing information (PMI) and geometric tolerances (GD&T).
- Product Development - Control the development of complex products in a single, real-time environment.
- Recipe Development - Develop recipes and formulas rapidly, reusing existing ingredients, incl. packaging design and labeling.
For the full functional scope of S/4HANA PLM, please visit Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) | SAP Help Portal
Note that SAP S/4HANA solutions with “product lifecycle management” in their names will be changed to "integrated product development". For example, “SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, product lifecycle management” will be renamed to “SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, integrated product development".
SAP Integrated Product Development
SAP Integrated Product Development (IPD) is a comprehensive, cloud-native PLM suite running on the public cloud, leveraging the capabilities of the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). The adoption of a cloud infrastructure will enable integration of advanced Generative AI (GenAI) and native collaboration capabilities into the PLM suite, significantly enhancing the automation and collaboration aspects of the idea-to-market process.
(SAP IPD is a separate solution, not to confuse with SAP S/4HANA integrated product development - see naming change note above).
SAP’s Product Lifecycle Management cloud solution (formerly called SAP Enterprise Product Development) has been renamed to SAP Integrated Product Development as of January2025. This name change doesn’t impact the roadmap and the future direction of the product.
Core capabilities of the solution include
- Innovation Management
- Requirements & Systems Engineering
- Product Data Management (Standard and Professional)
- Product Data Integration (CAD Integration)
- Product Data Exchange
- Recipe Formulation
- Product Handover
- Product & Asset Visualization
More details on the product and roadmap:
SAP Integrated Product Development | SAP Help Portal
SAP Road Map Explorer
SAP 3D Visual Enterprise
SAP 3D Visual Enterprise Generator is a graphical processing client-server application that allows users to automate the processing of CAD and other 2D and 3D graphics. It can translate nearly any 3D CAD file into a lightweight format for downstream use. The solutions supports specific work processes in engineering, manufacturing, and maintenance. With SAP 3D Visual Enterprise Generator, you can create enterprise solutions that enable nontechnical users to search, access, manipulate, and integrate complex graphical data into any business or office application across an organization.
SAP 3D Visual Enterprise Author is a standalone application used to manage and author 2D, 3D, animation, video, and audio assets residing on a computer or network. The solution can create 3D animations and render rich visual content into common desktop documents, file formats, and business applications for secure downstream use.
SAP 3D Visual Enterprise Viewer provides visualization as a permanently available and fully integrated solution component. You can view and interact with authored and published content. This end-user tool is lightweight, powerful, easy to use – and free of charge. SAP 3D Visual Enterprise Viewer available on Android and iPad as well.
For details on the technical system landscape visit Technical System Landscape | SAP Help Portal
SAP Teamcenter by Siemens
Customers can leverage SAP Teamcenter to enable a comprehensive engineering focused PLM suite tailored for discrete manufacturing environments, especially with complex products (e.g. Aerospace & Defense, High Tech industry segments). For more details: SAP Teamcenter by Siemens | SAP Help Portal
Learn more about the partnership: SAP and Siemens – Better Together - SAP Community
PLM system integration for SAP S/4HANA
SAP PLM system integration for SAP S/4HANA (PLMSI) is an add-on that enables seamless integration of product-relevant data to realize bi-directional process integration between SAP S/4HANA and an external PLM system. PLM system integration replaces the SAP product data management integration (PDMI), the latter solutions mainstream maintenance ending by 12/31/2025.
PLMSI supports integration with
- SAP Teamcenter by Siemens
- Autodesk Vault
- PTC Windchill
- Dassault 3DEXPERIENCE
PLM system integration for SAP S/4HANA | SAP Help Portal
SAP Engineering Control Center for SAP S/4HANA (ECTR)
SAP ECTR for SAP S/4HANA is a graphical user interface and a direct interface to the SAP system. The interface integrates the data and functions of heterogeneous applications in a uniform platform with SAP PLM. The graphical display of the high-level architecture is available in the Administrator Guide.
With SAP Engineering Control Center, you can integrate business data from SAP software with design information from authoring tools for mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD), electrical and electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), software and other simulation tools.
SAP Product Lifecycle Costing
SAP Product Lifecycle Costing (PLC) is a solution to calculate costs and other dimensions for new products or quotations in an early stage of the product lifecycle, to quickly identify cost drivers along the lifecycle, and to easily simulate and compare alternatives. PLC enables users to gain visibility across teams, proactively manage costs, and support new product innovations and customer-specific engineered products. You can develop product cost estimates at the early stages of product development, for customer quotations & throughout the product lifecycle. Connects to SAP ERP & S/4HANA, and legacy systems.
SAP PLC is an independent product (not an add-on) on SAP HANA – can be used as a standalone solution or integrated with SAP S/4HANA.
SAP Product Lifecycle Costing offers two system landscape options:
- Minimal system landscape
- Side-by-side scenario with SAP ERP
The minimal system landscape to run SAP Product Lifecycle Costing is to install the application standalone. This landscape is recommended when there is no need to consume data that from an SAP ERP system (e.g., existing master data).
In the side-by-side scenario you connect SAP Product Lifecycle Costing to an SAP ERP system to leverage and access existing master data and transactional data.
Criteria to determine the most suitable target solution
Industry specific requirements, product complexity and integration requirements are the main drivers for choosing the target solutions. We assume that SAP S/4HANA is part of the application architecture (current or target).
Consider the following criteria to define the right target architecture:
1. Industry sector
SAP PLM offers solutions both for discrete and process industry customers as well as asset intensive industries.
Process Industry (Formulated Products)
The well-established Recipe Management in SAP S/4HANA and the innovative features in Integrated Product Development (e.g. Specification Management and Recipe Formulation, Product Compliance check and Packaging and Delivery Mechanism Design) makes the solutions suitable for process industry companies (e.g., but not limited to Food & Beverage, Chemicals).
Industries like Life Sciences require GxP compliant solutions, e.g., S/4HANA, SAP Intelligent Clinical Supply Management (ICSM).
SAP Road Map for Integrated Product Development
Discrete Industry (Designed Products)
For customers in discrete industry segments, particularly in segments like Automotive Suppliers, Industrial Manufacturing, High-Tech and Consumer Products, SAP PLM offers a versatile approach tailored to unique customer scenarios and business processes.
2. Product complexity
Especially in discrete industries, the target application portfolio is driven by the complexity of the products.
- Customers with low or moderate complexity: the go-to solution is the cloud-native SAP Integrated Product Development complementing the core ERP (S/4HANA), adept at meeting the specific needs of these customers. This approach is particularly suitable for customers requiring a straightforward, turnkey PLM solution. SAP IPD integrates with both SAP S/4HANA public and private editions.
- Customers with advanced engineering centric requirements: customers in certain industries (e.g., High Tech and A&D) with high product complexity have the option to leverage third-party PLM application, like SAP Teamcenter by Siemens together with the next generation SAP PLM system integration solution. Alternatively, they can choose a hybrid approach based on the SAP PLM portfolio.
3. Integration requirements
Customers with existing PLM system (non-SAP) and/or authoring (CAD) applications can leverage SAP solutions to integrate with SAP S/4HANA to create a seamless digital thread (systems & business process integration), establishing a single source of truth for product data from design to operate.
4. Object Visualization
Object visualization in PLM refers to the ability to visually represent digital product data, like 3D models and assemblies, within a PLM system, allowing users to interact with and analyze the design in a visual manner throughout the product lifecycle, from design to manufacturing and beyond; essentially, it's the process of creating a 3D visual representation of a product within the PLM platform to facilitate better understanding and collaboration across teams.
All major PLM platforms offer advanced visualization tools, therefor the SAP 3D Visual Enterprise is only an optional component. SAP’s solution can be an option when advanced PLM application is not available. SAP Engineering Control Center (ECTR) can convert CAD to 3D Visual Enterprise.
SAP solution options based on industry characteristics and product complexity
* Companies with high product complexity and engineering requirements most likely have advanced investments in external PLM systems.
Conclusion
Companies using SAP have been running PLM in their ERP solution and by moving to SAP S/4HANA they can continue to do so. While SAP S/4HANA provides the standard core PLM capabilities, customers recognize the need for more robust digital solution to manage complex PLM processes.
PLM is now increasingly moving towards the cloud, driven by the benefits that cloud computing offers. This shift is being catalyzed by the need for greater collaboration, automation, scalability and efficiency.
By adopting the structured approach described above, you can position the SAP PLM solutions to effectively meet the diverse and complex needs of various industry segments, ensuring that each customer can leverage the right combination of solutions to optimize their product lifecycle management processes.