Have you ever got started on a project and ¼ of the way into it you wish you had structured the files differently?  It’s bad enough when you work by yourself, but imagine the challenges for part/assembly structuring for a design team.  People have different ideas about how files should be combined, and some team members (not to point any fingers) have no idea of file structure whatsoever. 

SolidWorks TreeHouse is a great, FREE utility that you can use to lay out your project before you start hacking away at it.  A design manager could lay out an entire project in this visual format, assign custom properties and part numbers to the files, reuse old data, and automatically generate the appropriate SolidWorks Documents. 

From there you can check it into PDM, assign owners, and have designers “do the needful” to get the project in the works.   As a planning too, it will give you an idea of how much of the new design needs to be created from scratch, vs. reused.  
If used correctly, it reduce the number of files that need to be obsoleted in the process, and it could make it easier to assign resources early in the project. 

http://labs.solidworks.com/Products/Product.aspx?name=treehouse

I could really see it as a tool for the quoting process.  You can build up your design hierarchy without doing the detailed work, and quickly have a clear picture of the engineering scope ahead.  If the project fails to come to fruition, (never happens, right?) not much time is lost.  When the Purchase order comes in, the team can use the skeleton to jump right on it.