For the past few years, the relevance between product lifecycle management (PLM) and sustainability is increasing as more manufacturers are starting to tie their initiatives in sustainability with PLM adoptions. Based on the PLM selection project statistics captured at Technology Evaluation Centers, the "improve level of regulatory compliance" ranking, among 50 business objectives applicable to PLM adoption as TEC identified, increased from 44 in 2007 to 34 in 2008 and then to 28 in 2009. Although regulatory compliance only represents a piece of the entire sustainability pie, this significant increase indicates that besides speeding up time-to-market, reducing product costs, improving product quality, etc., improving sustainability is becoming an important decision factor to make for companies when adopting PLM.
