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A Company and its Data 33

– the first acts on the transactional aspect, i.e. in run
time;
– the second acts on data governance, i.e. in governance
time.

1.5.3. Product Information Management (PIM) and
Product Life Management (PLM)

For a long time, companies have used software to manage
the design process of their products with solutions called
9
Product Life Management (PLM) systems.
They also use software for the configuration of products to
marketing standards, or for manufacturing and sales, using
Product Information Management (PIM) solutions.

PLM and PIM are based on flexible data models enabling
the complex configuration of products, but not yet semantic
in order to directly express within the models all the data
validation rules. PLM and PIM bring with them certain
constraints:

– software developments, sometimes heavy and often
rigid (hard-coded), are necessary in order to implement the
data validation rules that cannot be stated in these models;
– the flexibility of the data model is dedicated to
product management. It is not possible to use PLM and PIM
for data other than products;
– when the description of a product needs to be
connected with other business objects, for example factories
or employees, a disconnect in the data repositories appears,
due to the fact that PLM and PIM can only harbor product
information. In the end, PLM and PIM recreate silos on

9. For more information on PLM, see [DEB 04].