[Sigia-l] PDM - industry potential for IAs

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Ken Bryson
|
| Maybe I'm just crawling out from under a rock on this, but I just
| came across the whole PDM (Product Data Management) industry.
| 
| Has anyone theorized on how this industry relates to what we do as
| IAs, Librarians, UX professionals?

It doesn't seem clear to me that PDM relates to IA in ways that are
substantially different from how, say, financial data management
does. The PDM industry has traditionally been more sophisticated in
terms of data modelling than most IT industries, but from my (limited)
understanding of PDM that's pretty much all you could use to argue
that PDM is more closely related than anything else is.

Which is not to say that a basic understanding of PDM isn't useful for
IAs. 

| Maybe it's just content management by another name?

It's not. PDM deals with very different data sets, though CM and PDM
touch in the technical documentation area. PDM tends to deal with
information about the components that make up products, which can be
everything from CAD data to component dependencies, revision
information, and suitable markets for component assemblies.

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50                  <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >