PLM Cannot Deal with Flexibility

I posted this is response to a blog entry made by Oleg Shilovitsky, PLM and Data Modeling Flux

PLM systems have had a very hard time with data flexibility or data plasticity. Even more so, PLM systems do not handle hierarchical classification particularly well either. The same rigidity needed for document revisions does not work for constantly evolving product and components attributes. It's one of the reasons why I recommend a PLM solution architecture to my clients that is composed of a PLM system, search and attribute management solutions.

Think about all the rows (data) and columns (attributes) engineers manage with individual spreadsheets. The amount of time wasted in managing these characteristics about products and components is truly staggering.  The number of errors and product issues due to miscommunication of attribute data has resulted in billions of losses. You would think there would be a huge economic incentive to addressing this problem!