// lightweight PLM · electronics
PLM stands for "product lifecycle management". Behind the acronym, a simple idea: everything you know about a component lives in one place, from the moment you pick it to the moment it reaches the bench, and everyone reads the same thing. Here is what that means when you do electronics with three people, not three hundred.
// 01 · the idea
Take a regulator. Someone picked it on a comparison site. Someone drew its symbol and its footprint. The datasheet arrived by email. It was ordered, put away in a drawer, soldered onto three boards. Two years later, the manufacturer discontinues it.
Each of these stages produces a piece of information, and each one ends up somewhere else: a spreadsheet, a shared folder, a local KiCad library, the memory of whoever was there. PLM is simply keeping that information together, attached to the component itself, for its whole life. Nothing more mysterious than that.
PartFolio covers stages 01 to 05, the fourth one only in part, the sixth not at all. The details are below, with nothing dressed up.
// 02 · the problem
Nobody wakes up looking for a PLM. You look for a way to stop losing half a day on things that should be settled. If three of these sentences ring true, that is what we are talking about.
// 03 · the coverage
Let's walk back through the life of a component, in order, and look at what is really in the product today. Every line points to a feature that exists and that you can try.
Stage 01Choose
One library per component family, custom fields, controlled value lists so that "MULTICOMP" and "Multicomp Pro" do not become two manufacturers. Duplicate detection cleans up what is already there.
Stage 02Draw
One git repository per library: the full history, a single authoritative version, and a preview drawn right inside PartFolio to check without opening KiCad.
Stage 03Document
The PDF hosted with the component, or the link to the manufacturer. One screen lists what is missing, so the gap shows up before it becomes a problem.
Stage 04Source
PartFolio tells you what is missing and in what quantity, with a low-stock threshold per component. It does not place the order and does not track prices: your distributor does that better.
Stage 05Store and assemble
Stock by location, logged movements, and the KiCad BOM checked against what you really have: what is covered, what is missing, how many boards you can build.
ThroughoutServe and share
KiCad queries the library over the HTTP API: no more file to copy around. Members have three clear roles, every access is traced, and an AI connector lets you query and enrich the base in plain language.
// 04 · the boundary
An industrial PLM handles four-signature approval workflows, engineering change orders, BOM variants, consolidated costs. It is built for a department of twenty people that has to prove to an auditor what it did.
A three-person workshop does not have that problem. It needs to know which component, which footprint, how many in the drawer. So PartFolio stops at the component, and it does that well.
| What we are talking about | Industrial PLM | PartFolio | Shared spreadsheet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single component base | Yes | Yes | By hand |
| Versioned symbols and footprints | Yes | Yes | No |
| Read directly by KiCad | Depends on the tool | Yes | No |
| Stock and locations | Through the ERP | Yes | By hand |
| Approval workflow, engineering change orders | Yes | No | No |
| Purchasing, orders, price tracking | Yes | No | No |
| Getting started | Several months | That same afternoon | Immediate, then it drifts |
PartFolio is the source of truth for your components. Your project management, your accounting and your purchasing stay where they are, and they come and read from it what they need. A tool that claims to do everything ends up doing everything by halves.
Create a base, import your components, connect KiCad. The rest comes as you go, with no rollout project and no consultant.
