Analysis of Critical Success Factors for PDM System Implementation Based on DEMATEL Method

Product data management system implementation is a complex systems engineering, and influenced by many factors that influence each other and function. In order to identify the critical success factors, through an extensive review of the literature, total of 21 factors for the successful PDM system implementation are collected, and uses DEMATEL approach to visualize the structure of complicated causal relationships between these CSFs and obtain the influence level of these factors. According to the results of proposed method, eight critical success factors are figured out, such as top management support, project management, intensive education and training, key user involvement, project scope and goals, implementation approach, change management and business process reengineering. All these factors can be achieved in a stepwise way for better promoting the effectiveness and efficiency of PDM implementation. Keywords—product data management; system implementation; critical success factors; DEMATEL method