UPIDS® PLM, short for Product Lifecycle Management is a extension to UPIDS® Product Data Management where product masterdata links to single units or instances of the product. Practically this means that each product item is given a serial number and products have a “digital twin” for each and each twin can have distinct lifecycle of their own.
Lifecycle can contain not just lifecycle events but also association to other products or material streams, forming up a traceability chain. On products that traceability is considered significant value-add or is mandatory by regulation the PLM system can maintain any level of chain throughout the lifecycle of the product.
UPIDS® PDM can be extended with UPIDS® PLM. Every package or batch gets it’s own identifier and together with it, a digital twin. Very detailed product data can be stored in the digital twin and the PLM allows the single unit traceability. Digital twin enables tracing the item and also any materials and ingredients used in or associated with it. For global compatibility, the 2D code standard used is the GS1 Digital Link QR code. GS1 Digital Link includes the GTIN code and offline readable sell-by-date. Direct feedback-link associates the unique identifier so the feedback is pointed to “digital twinned” item.
UPIDS® services are combination of multiple products. We have listed some of the key features here and how those are linked together within the UPIDS® product family. Lot of lifecycle management is about events originating from outside systems or UPIDS® communicating events or data to outside. These features are best to be studied from our API documentation (made available for registered customers).
UPIDS® key features
| Feature / UPIDS® product | IO | PDM | PLM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Create new product to maintain | X | ||
| Generic product information (names, categorization) | X | ||
| Digital Asset Management | X | ||
| AI assisted translation flow | X | ||
| AI assisted content creation, validation and management | X | ||
| Maintain in-depth product details (nutrients, certificates, claims) | X | ||
| Serialize sellable units | X | X | |
| Maintain traceability data | X | X | |
| Integrate with ecommerce platforms | X | X | |
| Display rich product information with multilingual user experience | X | X | |
| Receive feedback or survey results from consumer | X | X | |
| Drive consumers to purchase the product from online stores | X | ||
| Report and analyze the consumer interactions with the product | X | ||
| Warehouse management | X | X | |
| Supply chain management and analytics | X | X |
LIFECYCLE EVENTS TURNING TO STORY OF TRACEABILITY
Traceability can mean so many different things. Our approach on “digital twinning” is to allow easy integration of any external system to send lifecycle data to us and to be associated with the serialized twin on our database. Be it direct API integration or EDI message, UPIDS® PLM circulates around one identifier of the twin.
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