Hi @Lu ,
You can read more on the JMP help for PLS here. In addition, according to the JMP online book by Ian Cox and Marie Gaudard, Discovering Partial Least Squares with JMP, p. 22:
"The Variable Importance for the Projection (VIP) statistic, discussed in Wold (1995, p. 213) and In Wold et al. (2001, p. 123), is defined as a weighted sum of squares of the weights, W."..."Being based on weights, it measures a predictor's contribution to characterizing the factors used in the PLS model...".
The VIP by default is 0.8, but can be changed in JMP and it is a cumulative measure of the influence of a variable on the model. An analogy would be "Portion" in the Boosted Tree and Bootstrap Forest platforms -- the portion of the model that is explained by a given factor X. Factors with both low VIP values and coefficients in the model can be deleted as their contribution is negligible.
As a note: it is often better to use the VIP vs. Coefficients for Centered and Scaled Data because it considers the size of the effect as well as the VIP. Again, the threshold value is 0.8, which may or may not be appropriate for your data. A higher or lower value might be more appropriate and should be considered when evaluating a model's performance to predict an outcome.
I think you'll find the book by Cox & Gaudard helpful -- plus, you can find it for free as a PDF online in support.sas.com.
Hope this helps,
DS