Enhance efficiency and break down silos across your organization with integrated data management and PLM. Discover how a unified platform empowers every team—from procurement to quality and supply chain—with real-time product data for smarter decisions, improved collaboration, and faster product development.

Data management solutions have traditionally been considered as only relevant to design, engineering, and manufacturing teams – those directly involved in product creation. However, for stakeholders across every department, the need to integrate this data into daily workflows is no longer optional. It’s a must for driving efficiency, collaboration, and a competitive advantage. 

Integrated data management and PLM

An integrated data management and product lifecycle management solutions drives innovation and agility across your organization. It puts everyone at the center of smarter, faster, decision-making with access to shared, accurate product data. 

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Explore current challenges and how teams across procurement, quality management, supply chain, and beyond can harness the power of an integrated data management and PLM solution to boost operations, improve decision-making, and deliver better products to market faster.  

Break down silos with integrated product data and workflows

One of the biggest challenges facing manufacturers today is the siloed nature of product information. Design teams create CAD models and specs, engineering teams develop technical documentation and bills of materials, manufacturing teams also manage BOMs, while procurement, quality, and supply chains often operate from fragmented or outdated data sets. This leads to misalignment, errors, delays, and inefficiencies that span across the product lifecycle. 

Siloed information and workflows are more than just a headache; they comes with significant risks. Without shared visibility into the latest, accurate product data: 

• Procurement teams may order incorrect materials or quantities, driving up costs and inventory waste. 

• Supply chain managers struggle to coordinate parts and logistics without a real-time view into design changes or manufacturing status. 

• Quality control cannot track defects or non-compliance back to root causes effectively. 

• Sales and customer service lack accurate product specifications necessary to respond to customer inquiries or service issues. 

Integrated data management and PLM solutions provide a “single source of truth,” consolidating product data, engineering changes, documents, and BOMs in one system accessible across the entire organization.  

Empower procurement: Gain smarter sourcing with real-time product data

Procurement teams control costs and ensure quality —they source the materials, parts, and services needed for production. But when product data is disconnected, their job becomes much harder: 

• They can’t always see engineering changes that affect which materials are needed. 

• Using outdated BOMs can cause overstock or shortages. 

• Tracking supplier quality and compliance is difficult without good data. 

Integrated data and PLM workflows solve these problems by giving procurement teams real-time access to the latest designs, BOMs, and supplier details. Now they can order what’s needed, when it’s needed, work more efficiently with suppliers, and maintain compliance with traceability and audit trails. 

Procurement teams can more easily control spending, avoid costly mistakes, and maintain a reliable supply chain—all of which help protect profits. 

Elevate quality management: Go from reactive to proactive

Maintaining compliance and driving continuous improvement relies on accurate data and traceability across the product lifecycle. For quality management, disconnected data and workflows make: 

• Tracking the origin of defects is difficult. 

• Conducting root cause analysis is inefficient. 

• Meeting regulatory and certification requirements is challenging. 

Integrated data management and PLM provide end-to-end visibility into product revisions, manufacturing process controls, inspection records, and nonconformance reports. Quality managers can easily identify patterns and early warnings for potential failures, accelerate corrective actions, and support audits and ensure compliance with comprehensive documentation at their fingertips.  

Putting data first improves product reliability, reduces warranty costs, and strengthens brand reputation. 

Streamline your supply chain: Gain visibility and agility across operations

Every organization’s supply chain is a complex web of suppliers, logistics, and production schedules that must adapt quickly to changing conditions. For stakeholders, integrated data and PLM workflows are critical for: 

• Coordinating part deliveries aligned with manufacturing schedules. 

• Responding to engineering change notifications impacting component needs. 

• Managing risks by understanding the impact of supplier delays or substitution requests. 

• Ensuring compliance through traceability of materials and components. 

With integrated data and PLM workflows, supply chain teams receive timely updates on product changes, manufacturing status, and quality alerts. The result – demand forecasting, flexible inventory management, and rapid response to disruptions become much easier.  

Autodesk Fusion for enterprise data management and PLM

It’s no secret that manufacturing organizations face increasing pressure to boost innovation, streamline operations, and maintain clarity across all departments. Fusion integrates data management and PLM processes with tools for CAD, CAM, CAE, and PCB. This cloud-based unified platform helps streamline product development processes. With centralized product data accessible anywhere, anytime, Fusion breaks down the traditional silos that often slow progress and cause misalignment. Its real-time collaboration tools empower teams across engineering, procurement, quality, and supply chain to work together, driving smarter decisions and faster product development.  

With Fusion, you’re not just investing in a set of tools– you’re enabling an enterprise-wide transformation with a cloud-based unified platform for design and manufacturing. Fusion’s comprehensive data management and PLM capabilities— change and release management, new product introduction, supplier collaboration, quality management, and more – teams stay connected and work smarter and faster than ever before. In a market where the ability to innovate, adapt, and execute quickly is critical, Autodesk Fusion equips you with capabilities to help your organization future-proof operations, unlock new value, and stay ahead of the competition.