An agri-food PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is software that centralizes all data related to a food product—recipes, allergens, nutritional values, costs, packaging, and regulatory labeling—and manages it from product design through to market withdrawal. It serves as the single product repository on which R&D, quality, marketing, and production teams collaborate.
Page updated on July 9 by Keendoo, a PLM provider for the food industry for over 10 years, working with approximately 50 food companies.
What Is PLM? Definition
PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is software that centralizes all information related to a product and manages it from design through the end of its market life: marketing briefs, specifications, costs, quality and regulatory controls, packaging, production planning, and launch.
What is PLM? “Further Ahead Now”? Almost! Because with this powerful tool, you can boost your performance. In practical terms, all these elements—which were previously scattered—are brought together and managed within a single application.
These days, products are packed with data: it’s estimated that there are an average of 1,000 data points associated with a single food product. With PLM, all this data and documentation is centralized and can be shared within a single application.
What does a PLM system manage in the food industry?
Keendoo’s expertise in the food industry has led it to develop a PLM specifically designed for food manufacturers. Unlike a general-purpose PLM, a food industry PLM natively incorporates the sector’s specific characteristics:
- fields filled in automatically: allergens, nutritional, organoleptic, and microbiological characteristics;
- access to the Ciqual and USDA reference databases;
- automatic nutritional calculations;
- labeling in compliance with INCO regulations;
- cost price simulation;
- Versioning of recipes and formulations.
These automated processes significantly reduce development time and ensure that products comply with regulations.
A collaborative work tool
With a PLM, the product is a shared focus across the company, with each department contributing to it: R&D, quality, and marketing first and foremost, but also executive management, management control, procurement, sales, production, and logistics. The product is no longer a jigsaw puzzle of information, with each department holding a piece.
Keendoo PLM, developed for the agri-food industry, facilitates collaborative work on a single version of the project, with effective tracking and workflow management: task assignment, automatic scheduling, project budget tracking, automatic notifications to managers of active tasks, dashboards with overall metrics, and document approval processes.
By centralizing the history of all previous research, PLM also serves as a driver of innovation: to innovate effectively, it’s best to build on what already exists or on projects that have already been considered. Being able to instantly retrieve information about an existing product frees up time for research and new developments.
Formulation and Immediate Simulations
Keendoo’s PLM enables you to simulate formulations and instantly evaluate their characteristics: production costs, nutritional values, and associated allergens. Your R&D and quality teams can focus entirely on refining recipes, upgrading product lines, or creating new products—and you’ll be able to respond more quickly to requests for proposals and consumer expectations.
→ Learn more: Check out the “Formulation of Agri-Food Products” module.
PLM, ERP, PIM: What Are the Differences?
These three categories of software are complementary, not competitive:
- PLM manages the product lifecycle before and during commercialization: design, formulation, regulatory data, and quality. It is the repository where product data is created and validated.
- The ERP system manages the company’s business processes: purchasing, inventory, production, and billing. Keendoo’s PLM is natively integrated withthe VIF ERP system, a leading solution in the food industry: the validated product data in the PLM feeds directly into production.
- PIM, as it is currently understood, refers to electronic catalogs and data pools (such as GS1) that distribute product data to retailers and e-commerce sites. PLM operates at an earlier stage: it serves as the foundation of reliable internal data that feeds these external systems via connectors (REST APIs).
Further Reading: PIM vs. PLM Software: What Are the Differences, and Which One Should You Choose?
What are the benefits for your business?
- Optimize product development time
- Improve costs, and thus margins
- Work with a simple and intuitive tool, designed in collaboration with a team of UX designers
- Accessing Data on the Go (100% Web-Based)
- Respond more quickly to requests for proposals
- Providing the right data at the right time
- Making decisions based on consolidated and reliable data
- Increasing data traceability for regulatory compliance (e.g. INCO)
For more than 10 years, about 50 food and beverage companies have been using Keendoo PLM on a daily basis. And with Quick Start PLM, the solution is up and running in just 3 days: PLM is finally accessible to small and medium-sized food and beverage companies.
Frequently Asked Questions About PLM in the Food Industry
PLM stands for Product Lifecycle Management. It is software that centralizes all information about a product—on average, 1,000 data points per food product—and manages it from design through market withdrawal.
PLM manages product design and data (specifications, quality, regulatory compliance); ERP manages business processes (purchasing, inventory, production, billing). They complement each other: Keendoo PLM is natively integrated with VIF ERP.
Because the sector’s specific requirements are inherent to it: allergens, nutritional calculations, Ciqual and USDA databases, INCO labeling, and recipe versioning. A general-purpose PLM system requires costly custom development to meet these needs.
Traditional PLM deployments take several months. With Keendoo's Quick Start PLM, the solution is up and running in 3 days, making it accessible to small and medium-sized food and beverage companies.
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