USA Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) is an integrated, information-driven approach comprised of people developing and consistently performing the refined processes/practices that mature and manage a product throughout the life cycle. PLM integrates technical processes and enables product knowledge retention and certification of product data with objective focused requirements that address specific use cases.

PLM provides requirements management, systems engineering and interface management, design control, change management of engineering data, and configuration management. This includes defining design and performance requirements; enabling design to a requirement; providing development, test, and evaluation of the design; supporting creation and build of the product; and facilitating certification and delivery of the product to a customer.

USA evaluated, selected, and interfaced the best Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software tools available from multiple providers to obtain optimal data management with a state-of-the-art database built to manage product data for the full life cycle of a product.