I built a lightweight PLM tool for HW startups & SMBs with free access
TLDR: Title says it all, here is the link if you want to try it out: oroForge
My Story: I've been building hardware products for almost 12 years now. Most of it has been IoT products that I built for clients of mine. I took a couple of my own shots but most of it didn't work out for one reason or another. A lot of the development I did was focused on Zero-to-One (EVT stage if you want to get technical). I took on a role where I had to lead from concept to production. The team was mostly software and the exec didn't want to let me hire more HW guys. I got squeezed and was looking for tools to help. I came across PLMs and was hoping that those tools would help a bit but I quickly got sticker shocked. Some even said it would take weeks to implement with one of their on-boarding members.
I just wanted a tool to help organize the BOM, set some processes so our CM would have the right part files, and a central "repo" for our MFG data. With the market conditions, the exec team cancelled my position because "Hardware is Hard." I decided to try to turn lemons into lemonade and built what I consider to be the Minimum Viable PLM: BOM management, PDM, and basic ECO. It's inexpensive (has a free tier) and fast to setup. I specifically built a BOM import agent to help load data quickly. It's not perfect but works.
The vision from here is pretty open. For hobby use, I want to set it up like OnShape and GitHub so the free tier has unlimited public projects so anyone can share their open source projects. For professional use, I want to build out agents that handle boring tasks (datasheet gathering, spec review, certification, etc.) so HW startups can scale faster with fewer mistakes.