2 Agile PLM Overview

The Agile PLM suite of solutions covers five primary areas of product lifecycle management:

• Agile Product Collaboration (PC) - Management and collaboration of product record information throughout the product lifecycle, across internal organizations and the extended supply chain. Accessed through Web Client and Java Client.

• Agile Product Governance & Compliance (PG&C) - Management and tracking of all substances and materials contained by any item or manufacturer part, allowing companies to meet substance restrictions and reporting requirements, design recyclable products, minimize compliance costs, and eliminate noncompliance on future products. Accessed through Web Client.

• Agile Product Portfolio Management (PPM, formerly Program Execution) - Integration of program and product information, streamlining business processes across the product lifecycle and across a portfolio of programs. Accessed through Web Client.

• Agile Product Quality Management (PQM, formerly Product Service & Improvement) - Integration of customer, product, quality, and regulatory information with a closed-loop corrective action system. Accessed through Web Client and Java Client.

• Agile Product Cost Management (PCM) - Management of product costs across the product lifecycle and synchronization of product cost data and processes. Accessed through Web Client.

• Agile Recipe & Material Workspace (RMW) - Management of biotechnological and pharmaceutical products, and improvement of business productivity, visibility, scientific outcomes, and proactive compliance during the product development lifecycle. Accessed through Web Client. For more information, see Agile PLM Getting Started with Recipe & Material Workspace.

Agile administrators use Agile Java Client to set up and maintain settings for these solutions.

The Agile Application Server, the foundation of the Agile suite, manages data stored in the Agile database. All Agile data is contained or organized in business objects that are set up by the administrator, and specified and used by the enterprise's Agile users. For instance, the administrator configures the Parts class of objects, and users create and deploy specific instances of the kinds of Parts made available to them. Business objects is a general term that implies objects created from the classes available to the enterprise, but other entities in Agile are also objects, such as workflows, searches, reports, and so forth.

The following figure shows relationships between the Agile functional components, the primary client applications used to manipulate the data (Agile Web Client and Java Client), and the Agile Application and Database Servers (the database where the data is stored).

Figure 2-1 Relationships Between Components in an Agile Setup