Abstract. Product lifecycle management (PLM) adoption includes very extensive changes in intra-and inter-organizational practices and requires new types of skills and capabilities. A controlled PLM implementation can therefore be very challenging in practice. PLM maturity models, often at least partly based on the thinking of CMM (Capability maturity modeling) can be used to make the implementation of PLM a better approachable and a more carefully planned and coordinated process. Our objective was to enhance current maturity modeling approaches on PLM implementation, and we have argued for and presented a novel PLM maturity dimension, "customer dimension", that we consider as an important addition to current PLM maturity models.

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This paper discusses about the evolution of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) through the introduction of an emerging vision in engineering design, proactive engineering. Over the last two decades, engineering design has seen some relevant approaches covering sequential engineering and then concurrent engineering (CE). Indeed, this shift was required to encompass knowledge integration issue into product design stages. This has led to relevant approaches such as design for X, parametric design, PLM-based approaches, decision-making support and ontology-based approaches to name a few. Proactive engineering can be considered as an emerging engineering framework which integrates as early as possible lifecycle knowledge and technological constraints in product design and manage those knowledge in an integrated and harmonious manner. The fact of using lifecycle process knowledge as design context demands therefore the definition of downstream processes before defining he product geometry so as to overcome current limitations in CE oriented PLM approaches. Hence, with such stakes, understanding and awareness becomes crucial in PLM in order to deliver well-balanced products.

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This paper evaluates the suitability of the CIMOSA modelling framework for the specification of control architectures for manufacturing systems. An architecture can be seen as a set of specifications that express the functions of components and their interfaces. Based on the characteristics of architectures, several requirements on architecture modelling techniques are defined. These requirements are used in the evaluation, which is illustrated by an industrial application. CIMOSA offers adequate constructs to specify concurrent processes and their interactions, and to specify process behaviour. The framework separates architectural concerns from implementation matters and provides multiple views. Dynamic constraints, which are used to non-deterministically specify system behaviour, can not be represented. In addition, the semantics of the formal model reveal some inconsistencies. The CIMOSA modelling framework is now accompanied by some methodologies that aim to guide the user in the application of the framework. 0 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.