The concept (and implementation) of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) has drawn much attention in both industry and academia. This paper investigates the scope of PLM systems, presents different types of PLM architecture and identifies an appropriate definition of PLM for a Network-Centric Manufacturing paradigm with a specific focus on small manufacturing enterprises. Research issues of PLM such as interoperability of product data model and standards of data exchange, system architecture, and the intellectual property protection are discussed. The paper concludes with guidelines for development of the next generation PLM software systems so that they can be cost effectively applied in a manufacturing systems environment.