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.

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,^[1] thus enabling concurrent engineering.^[2]

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.^[3]

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^[4]
• Enterprise resource planning tools
• Manufacturing execution systems
• Computer-aided design (MCAD) and electronic design automation (ECAD) tools