Solution Overview

Team

Teams add and remove people in a very dynamic manner.  Adding a team member can be as simple as walking down the hall and asking someone for assitance.  While this person might not be an official member of the team, this ad-hoc discussion is a very important part of the design process.  Therefore we can conclude that there is an extended team generated through ad-hoc design discussions.

Tracking Part Information
The main objective of a design team is to define the parts that make up the product. Each part will have input from multiple team members.  For instance a CAD designer might be responsible for modeling the part, while a procurement person would be selecting a supplier and yet another team member might determine the QA procedure.  This combined effort requires a huge amount of communication.

An Excel file is the most common way to track parts throughout the design process - as people are comfortable using a list to view all information about a product's parts.  For instance they might track the part number, description, vendor, material and a status (red, yellow, green) for each part.  

Communication Methods
Teams use simple tools in their day-to-day design discussions.  Hallway conversations, email and IM are the tools used to make design decisions.  Although a conversation between a CAD designer and a procurement person doesn't require either person's files to be managed they may attach images or files to their message to improve the other person's understanding.  

Throughout the design process, there are day-to-day discussions that affect team members who are not involved in the actual discussions.  These people often discover decisions that affect them days later.  A large amount of design-change or do-over is caused by just not knowing.  For example, a designer and manufacturing engineer decide to change the material of a part that I am performing analysis on...  Since I was not part of that discussion, there is a good chance that I will find myself sitting in the next design review saying "I wish I knew that... Now I have to redo my work". 

BOM (Bill-of-Material)
The BOM is a critical tool used throughout product development.  It is clear the BOM is important in production, but a BOM is also a convenient tool for anyone involved in the design phase as it gives the team a simple way to organize the product. 

Issue Tracking
It is very common for the team to track issues/problems using Excel.  The Excel file is maintained at the regular Project Management meetings.  After the meeting, email is used to distribute the list to those who must resolve problems.  As work is being done, the list is NOT maintained.  The list is only updated again at the next team meeting.  If the work someone is doing affects another member of the team, it is left to those poeple to communicate however they see fit.  Many times this communication is not effective and therefore people tend to only be on the same page just after a team meeting.

Type of User
Please define the type of company you work for.  Are you a End User person (work as part of a product development team as a CAD user, Engineer, Designer, Engineering IT or Project Manager...) or are you a Technology person (Some one who works for one of the PLM technology companies) or are you a PLM Consultant (Some one involved in the implementation of PLM technology).