PLC - Product Life Cycle Product Life Cycle (PLC) as a concept was first introduced into management literature

by Ted Levitt in 1965. Since then, the world has changed, and Geoffrey Moore of Silicon Valley came up with a book called Crossing the Chasm where he introduced the concept of a majority of new high-tech products falling into the chasm. PLC divides the product lifecycle into four stages based on time: introductory, growth,maturity, and decline. On the other hand, Moores chasm is based on a now well-accepted concept called technology adoption which categorizes users of technology into five categories: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, andlaggard. I would like to posit here that Moore's categories map to the stages of the PLC quite well: innovators and early adopters map to the introductory stage, early majority respond to the growth stage, late majority come into play during the maturity stage, and the laggards are buying when the product has moved past maturity into the final decline stage. In other words, tt can be argued that this chasm, if it exists, will not let the product move to the growth stage from the introductory stage, in the classic PLC diagram below, because the product will fall into the chasm between the early adopters and the early majority.

So, the PLC framework, if used for new product introduction strategies, should be used in conjunction with the concept of user adoption; this specially holds true for high-tech product cases involving technology adoption. Nevertheless, the PLC mapping is a useful framework to adopt for product cases in general, especially for established products, because as per the PLC curve above, the products sales will grow during the growth stage, will keep growing into the maturity stage, and then decline with time. Before the product sales and profits enter the decline stage, or at the beginning of the maturity stage, the company can take measures to extend the life cycle of the maturing product by introducing new products into the product mix, by stretching the product line vertically and horizontally, by making the product compatible with the latest technologies, etc.

For example, enterprise software companies with maturing ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software products, which were onpremise (deployable at the clients premises) are now extending the PLC of these solutions by introducing new ERP and CRM product lines which are on-demand(web based, need not be deployed at client sites, client can use the product on-demand through the Internet). For an illustration of how pharmaceutical companies extend the PLC of their prescription drugs at patent expiry by creating OTC (over the counter) drugs, please check thebiotech case in our Solved Cases section. Product life-cycle management This article is about the commercial term to describe the life of a product in the market. For the engineering term, see Product lifecycle management. Product life-cycle management (or PLCM) is the succession of strategies used by business management as a product goes through its life-cycle. The conditions in which a product is sold (advertising, saturation) changes over time and must be managed as it moves through its succession of stages. Product life-cycle (PLC) Like human beings, products also have an arc. From birth to death, human beings pass through various stages e.g. birth, growth, maturity, decline and death. A similar life-cycle is seen in the case of products. The product life cycle goes through multiple phases, involves many professional disciplines, and requires many skills, tools and processes. Product life cycle (PLC) has to do with the life of a product in the market with respect to business/commercial costs and sales measures. To say that a product has a life cycle is to assert three things:

Products have a limited life,and thus every product has life cycle Product sales pass through distinct stages, each posing different challenges, opportunities, and problems to the seller Products require different marketing, financing, manufacturing, purchasing, and human resource strategies in each life cycle stage. The four main stages of a product's life cycle and the accompanying characteristics are:

Stage

Characteristics 1. costs are very high 2. slow sales volumes to start 3. little or no competition 4. demand has to be created 5. customers have to be prompted to try the product 6. makes no money at this stage 1. costs reduced due to economies of scale 2. sales volume increases significantly 3. profitability begins to rise 4. public awareness increases 5. competition begins to increase with a few new players in establishing market 6. increased competition leads to price decreases 1. costs are lowered as a result of production volumes increasing and experience curve effects 2. sales volume peaks and market saturation is reached 3. increase in competitors entering the

1. Market introduction stage

2. Growth stage

3. Maturity stage

market 4. prices tend to drop due to the proliferation of competing products 5. brand differentiation and feature diversification is emphasized to maintain or increase market share 6. Industrial profits go down 1. costs become counter-optimal 2. sales volume decline 3. prices, profitability diminish 4. profit becomes more a challenge of production/distribution efficiency than increased sales

4. Saturation and decline stage

Meaning of the PLC As our goal is to bring high quality and innovative products to consumers, so that we designed the above life cycle to our product in order to reduce time to market, improve product quality, reduce prototyping costs, and identify potential sales opportunities and revenue contributions. These policies bring us to respect the environment and it will become one of the selling point of our products to our customer as nowadays more and more people start to consider the impact of the environment by the electronic devices. Thus recycling becomes very important to the product nowadays. The above product life cycle can ensure our product to fulfill the modern environmental protection standard

ISO TC 184/SC 4 is an international standards organization responsible for industrial data. ISO TC 184/SC 4 develelops and maintain ISO standards that describe and manage industrial product data throughout the life of the product.