Towards Improved Management Within the Cottage Industry: Product Lifecycle Management Case

Abstract Product Lifecycle Management remains a strategy that aims to strengthen the capabilities and competitive advantages of the company. Its implementation and its adoption depend on the problems that are brought back to be solved by this tool as well as its acceptance by the companies that will implement it. Hence, we like to introduce this approach within the cottage industry to improve its competitiveness. For this, we are going to present this article as being the first step towards the introduction of this strategy within the craft sector. So, we aim to investigate the problems faced by the craft sector, the levers favoring the establishment of this kind of approach and to analyse the independence between the problems investigated, the nature of the companies interviewed and their sector of activity. Data was gathered from surveys of 132 craft industries the primary data analysis was performed using excel and SPSS techniques and chi square test. The results affirm that the management and communication problems, as well as problems related to the raw material waste, are the most dominant in the sector. Moreover, our study shows that the problems faced by the sector are independent towards the nature of the company and the sector of activity.