A thorough analysis of data on aircraft lifecycle revealed inadequacy of current lifecycle management methods in the face of increased complexity of the Internet-based global market. A new method for managing lifecycle has been developed by authors and their teams using concepts and principles of the emerging complexity science with the aim of reducing lead times and costs. Centralised control has been replaced with distributed decision-making empowering all lifecycle stakeholders. The solution described in this paper is the first of its kind and it represents a genuine advance in knowledge, which leads to considerable reduction in design/production lead times and decrease in the lifecycle cost. The method has been validated in a variety of applications.
The paper proposes a new concept for product lifecycle management based on network-centric and multi-agent technology principles. Network-centric system Smart PLM is a superstructure over traditional PLM-systems, and is designed to increase efficiency of every stage of complex product lifecycle management. Key Smart PLM systems are also represented.