Best Free Product Lifecycle Management Software in 2024

From product concept to design, development, and disposal, product lifecycle management (PLM) software helps in the management of products across their lifespans. It is at the core of the enterprise, thus choosing your free PLM platform requires educated comparisons. With various PLM software solutions to choose from, this can be a real challenge. This buyer’s guide discusses the most important factors that you have to take into account when choosing the best free PLM software for your company.

Most leading product lifecycle management software providers offer free trials and product demos. This is one way to start your search, as you will get the chance to try how the free PLM software works and if it would enhance your existing operations. Start by checking the websites of top product lifecycle management platforms that offer freemium plans such as monday.com, LoopedIn (formerly Productstash), Skyjed, Simio Simulation Software, and Ciiva BOM Manager. These free product lifecycle management software solutions have earned high rankings in our reviews, where we also highlight their unique features.

• monday.com. This collaboration platform for teams facilitates faster product development by syncing all collaboration tools in real-time. It allows teams to easily build agile workflows to best serve your development team’s needs. The custom automation feature also helps teams to shorten the time to market and reduce operational work.
• LoopedIn. Formerly known as Productstash, this is an agile and innovative product road mapping solution that lets you collect customer feedback, build roadmaps, and share announcements. For every stage of product development, LoopedIn ensures that all the teams involved in product lifecycle management are kept in the loop. It also includes the changelog feature for creating standalone changelog pages, or it can also be roadmap-embedded.
• Skyjed. This all-in-one PLM software creates a single source of truth by unifying all data points across the product portfolio. The tools of Skyjed cover product design, tracking, monitoring, and reporting by using an integrated, code-free collaborative solution.
• Simio Simulation Software. This simulation, production planning, and scheduling software offers easy-to-use tools for object-based 3D modeling rapid risk analysis, and simulation. Using interactive management dashboards and customized reports, Simio allows for the sharing of simulation results online, making collaboration between teams more efficient.
• Ciiva BOM Manager. This cloud-based Bill of Materials (BOM) management platform ensures the integrity of component data across the entire product lifespan. It manages, tracks, and reviews changes as part of the component management solution, including the effective management of component data.

The general classification of product lifecycle management tools are:

• Product lifecycle management software from an ERP vendor: This type of product lifecycle management software is part of the end-to-end suite of tools offered by ERP platforms.
• Best-of-breed application: This is a suite of modules provided by product lifecycle management-specific vendors. This type of platform is designed to cover all the stages of the product lifecycle.
• Stand-alone product lifecycle management modules: The modules used as part of the product lifecycle management platform such as CAD and CAE can also be purchased separately and can be used as standalone solutions.

Whether you are opting for paid or free PLM software, you can expect the following features to be present:

Computer-aided design (CAD): For designing product components, CAD apps are capable of designing two- and three-dimensional models. This software is also used to accurately design any product, and you can also use this app to update and reuse existing designs.

Computer-aided engineering (CAE): CAE as a module in product lifecycle management software is used to check the overall design strengths and weaknesses of products. The preliminary design is prepared using CAE, and tools such as mechanical event simulation, fluid dynamics analysis, performance simulators, and finite element analysis are used to assess and improve product design.

Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM): Provided with design specifications, CAM creates products for manufacturers. It is software that communicates with the machinery that manufactures components. CAM also prepares the model for machining.

Manufacturing process management (MPM): The features of this tool of the product lifecycle development software free teams from repetitive tasks by automating the processes involved in making products. It manages the flow of manufacturing and sees to it that all activities related to manufacturing are properly coordinated.

Product data management (PDM): The process of designing a product entails documentation and PDM is the central warehouse that stores all this information. PDM modules are equipped with data security features and can be accessed from any device.

Reporting and analytics: Most product lifecycle management software solutions have pre-built reporting and analytics tools that can help you in the effective management of product life. These tools are useful in making accurate cost estimates and lead times.

Collaboration tools: Since product lifecycle management entails the collaboration of various functions and teams within the organization, collaboration tool is a key feature of product lifecycle management. This ensures that all teams involved in product lifecycle management are always in sync on how projects are progressing.

Unifies processes

Product lifecycle management software free users from the risk of inaccurate data. The fully automated processes, plus the collaboration tools provided by the free product lifecycle management software allow teams to share product data, production forecasts, and other important information related to product ideation, development, service, and disposal.

Integrates data and processes

Aside from streamlining processes, the product lifecycle management software facilitates holistic product development. The integration of processes and data also results in the effective end-to-end lifecycle management of products and services.

Faster innovation pipeline

The use of CAD and CAM software makes the production process faster. The efficient design creation as facilitated by CAD, as well as the accurate machining process as controlled by CAM, lowers overall production costs and fast tracks the production process.

Centralizes data 

The free PLM software sees to it that all technical and non-technical data, documentation, and other information for every product are kept in a safe place. Data is secured with specific role-based access.

Quality products at reduced costs

The free PLM software enables teams to have efficient and streamlined processes and reduced costs while enhancing quality. The closed-loop quality management increases transparency.

Ensures compliance 

Using product lifecycle management software allows organizations to quickly adjust to changing global standards. Compliance is ensured all the time as the platform can be quickly configured to comply with current standards.

Turns data into insights

The fully integrated product lifecycle management platform has built-in predictive analytics, AI, and machine learning tools that collect data and perform analyses. This enables teams to make quick decisions and formulate data-driven strategies.

Digital Twin and Digital Thread

The digital thread is the single data platform that ties together all the elements of the enterprise and its data to produce a complete view of the product—both digital and physical data—throughout its lifecycle. The digital thread unlocks speed and agility and delivers business value as it integrates all the information across supply networks. The digital twin is the digital representation of the physical asset. It is always associated with the digital thread. Based on the interconnected digital thread of every product, a digital twin is created. The digital thread and the digital twin integrate the electronic, mechanical, and software elements of product lifecycle management.

Product Data as a Service (PDaaS)

Part of product lifecycle management is the management of huge volumes of product information and PDaaS enables users across functions to access data-driven analytics in real-time. PDaaS facilitates faster decision-making and improves collaboration time. It reduces dependency on IT as product data and information is available as a service. PDaaS is able to manage the complexity of product lifecycle management by harnessing the power of new database systems.

Microservices Architecture

Leading manufacturing organizations are exploring alternative approaches to address the need for new architectures on which to build or extend their platforms. Since updating product lifecycle management packages built on monolithic architecture can be costly, one approach that manufacturers are looking into is building a microservices architecture that can be managed independently and individually as modules. It will deliver improved system uptime, improved scalability, and high system flexibility.

Blockchain

The different business functions collaborating for product development, plus the multiple vendors and suppliers also participating in the development cycle makes it a huge challenge for teams to create a single source of truth. The explosion of data originating from connected devices requires a secure, distributed ledger infrastructure that can be accessed by multiple parties. While there are still technical hurdles that need to be addressed with blockchain technology applied to the enterprise, it holds the potential to reduce multiple instances of truth.

The following challenges can affect the effective use of free product lifecycle management software:

Aging infrastructure. Technical integration is one major challenge among aging product lifecycle management infrastructure. For legacy systems, specifically, it becomes a challenge for teams to integrate aging infrastructure to modem product lifecycle management platforms. Some enterprises still insist on finding a way to use legacy systems with new platforms and this becomes a challenge.

Long deployment time. The product lifecycle management software implementation process typically takes two to three years, which involves a lengthy application process and stepwise procedure. For more complex businesses, it takes longer. This long deployment period often disrupts the operations of organizations, which in turn diminishes their motivation towards using the new platform. In addition, disagreements arise between teams as software limitations were not identified prior to deployment.

Disparate software systems. The number of applications involved in product development is very large and is continually growing. One potential issue in implementing a product lifecycle management platform is when there are incompatible software systems. Organizations need a new and more efficient way to interlink data related to different applications to maintain data integrity.

PLM software selection. Selecting the right product lifecycle management software solution is a potential issue because in the event that the enterprise picks the wrong solution, the primary purpose of using the software, which is to unify all systems related to product development, will not be served. When choosing a product lifecycle management software solution, it is important to consider not just the platform’s architecture, but also the compatibility with existing legacy software, as well as the capability of the software to manage your complex business processes.

From being a highly complex process, machine learning has transformed product lifecycle management through digitalization and by providing solutions for automation. With machine learning, product lifecycle management software evolved into intelligent platforms that provide value to enterprises as they make crucial business decisions.

The strength of machine learning in analyzing and interpreting data addresses the challenge of managing huge amounts of information in product lifecycle management. As machine learning is integrated into the product lifecycle management framework, the unique workflows of the organization as well as user behavior are adapted to make predictive inputs. This improves overall productivity while at the same time delivering valuable insights about current processes.

Digital technology is transforming product lifecycle management. Trends such as the digital twin and the digital thread, the PDaaS, including the huge potential of blockchain for building a single and unified platform that can be the single source of truth for the entire lifecycle of a product, only provide a glimpse of how intelligent product lifecycle management software could become in the near future.

Machine learning technology, for instance, can significantly improve productivity through predictive analytics. The complex processes involved in product lifecycle management can be simplified by Industry 4.0 technologies, which will translate to fast-tracked innovation and more effective product lifecycle management.