Some product data management (PDM) systems organize CAD models and drawings. Others manage engineering bills of material that include items from multiple CAD systems or that aren’t described in a CAD system at all. Enterprise resource-planning (ERP) systems control bills of material used by manufacturing departments and suppliers. In many companies, information from the CAD PDM system must be re-keyed into the engineering BoM or the ERP system, which wastes time and causes errors. Recently PLM companies have proposed combining the CAD and engineering PDM systems into one, thereby eliminating the need to enter data twice. These solutions give rise to more problems because what’s in the CAD system doesn’t necessarily correspond to what will be manufactured. Current models for CAD, EBoM, and ERP integration are too simplistic. We’ll brainstorm about conceptual processes that might handle reality.

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