Glossary of PLM-related terms
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- tabulated drawing
- A drawing that depicts a group of parts that share certain characteristics, and differ in other characteristics. Each depicted part has a unique part number to distinguish the differing characteristic.
- trustee
- A person with primary responsibility for the contents and status of an item in a PLM system. Although the item's creator or author is the initial trustee, this responsibility may be assigned to another person during the item's life.
- variant
- A complete product instance consisting of a common assembly and a particular set of optional assemblies. Think of an on-line PC supplier that builds a base computer, lets you choose the hard disk size, video card, and software that you want, and quickly finishes the resulting unit for you in near real time.
- variation
- Variation refers to a change in the attributes of an item, without regard as to whether the item identifier or revision (or version) has changed.
- vault, file (see repository, file)
- version
- A version refers to a particular variation of an electronic file, typically issued by a process or system outside the PLM system. While revisions typically identify successive steps in the evolution of an item, versions often are not sequential. Versions are commonly used for computer program files to identify a specific set of features, a set of bug fixes, and/or a particular build number.
- For example, a version "3.2.203" may indicate the marketing feature set "3.2" plus the compiler build "203". While you have an accurate picture for how many releases are represented in going from revision "01" to revision "04", you'd have little feel whether there were a few releases, or several hundred, between file versions "1.0.403" and "2.1.1042".
- Many PLM systems permit specifying both a revision and a version for the same item, which enables the PLM system to assign its own sequential revision to the outside system's seemingly-arbitrary, and generally non-sequential, version.
- For a more detailed discussion, see Terminology: revision or version?
- waiver (compare to deviation)
- A written acceptance of a part that is found, during manufacture or after inspection, not to meet its documented requirements, but still can be used "as is" or after repair by an approved method. Classified as a type of change form.
- workflow
- A sequence of events defined to manage a set of tasks. In a PLM system, workflow is primarily managing the creation, audit, approval and release process using change forms.