Engineering information management
Engineering information management (EIM) is the business function within product development and specifically systems engineering that allows engineers to collaborate on a single source of truth of engineering data.
Contrary to product data management (PDM) and product lifecycle management (PLM), its main purpose is not storage of CAD-related drawings and files, but rather the full execution of the V-model for hardware development, complementing and integrating to the above mentioned systems.
Scope
EIM systems enable collaboration on all important aspects of the engineering lifecycle, such as:
- Requirements management
- Functional design
- Product architecture
- Detailed systems design and simulation
- Verification and validation
- Documentation
EIM systems implement the activities on both sides of the engineering V-model. Instead of being purely a data storage, it focuses also on the human interaction with the models and data,{{Cite book|last1=Azam|first1=Farooque|last2=Li|first2=Zhang|last3=Ahmad|first3=Rashid|title=Proceedings of the 16th international conference on World Wide Web |chapter=Integrating value-based requirement engineering models to webml using vip business modeling framework |date=2007|chapter-url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1242572.1242698|pages=933–942 |location=New York, New York, USA|publisher=ACM Press|doi=10.1145/1242572.1242698|isbn=9781595936547 |s2cid=1070235 }} thus enabling concurrent engineering.{{Cite book|last=Stark|first=John|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/24628890|title=Engineering information management systems : beyond CAD/CAM, to concurrent engineering support|date=1992|publisher=Van Nostrand Reinhold|isbn=0-442-01075-3|location=New York|oclc=24628890}}
EIM therefore enables the optimization of products and engineering processes, where traditional methodologies have become ineffective in keeping up with rising product and process complexity.{{Cite journal|last1=Rangan|first1=Ravi M.|last2=Chadha|first2=Bipin|date=2001-03-01|title=Engineering Information Management to Support Enterprise Business Processes|url=https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/computingengineering/article/1/1/32/445238/Engineering-Information-Management-to-Support|journal=Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering|language=en|volume=1|issue=1|pages=32–40|doi=10.1115/1.1353845|issn=1530-9827|url-access=subscription}}
Interactions with the other engineering management systems
EIM systems do directly and indirectly interact with other tools in the engineering information infrastructure, such as:
- Computer simulation tools
- Automated hardware testing tools
- Product lifecycle and product data management systems{{Cite web |title=How PLM/PDM manage half of Engineers' data and how EIM complents the other 50%. – EIM |url=https://engineering-information-management.com/how-plm-only-manages-50percent-of-engineering-data-and-eim-complements-it/ |access-date=2022-03-17 |website=engineering-information-management.com}}
- Enterprise resource planning tools
- Manufacturing execution systems
- Computer-aided design (MCAD) and electronic design automation (ECAD) tools
