Integrated Product and Process Management for Engineering Design Applications

Abstract

SUKITS is a joint project of computer scientists and mechanical engineers which is devoted to the design and implementation of an integrated infrastructure for product development. This infrastructure-the CIM Manager-provides a framework for a posteriori integration of heterogeneous application systems. This paper describes management of engineering products and processes. Product management deals with configurations of interdependent, versioned documents such as designs, manufacturing plans, or NC programs. Management of engineering processes is tightly integrated with product management. A configuration of interdependent documents is interpreted as a net of communicating processes. Concurrent engineering is supported by exchanging pre-releases of intermediate results.

How to guarantee compliance between workflows and product lifecycles?

“…Version management (or version control) [39,13,51,6] is widely used in the management of engineering data [49,25,48,14]. Version management is concerned with maintaining different versions of objects and configurations and with providing support for operations on these versions.…”

“…State transition diagrams are a technique used to capture versioning of design objects in engineering-data management [49]. Transitions reflect the possible applications of version operations and may change the state of a design object.…”

“…Data management of these PLM systems follows that of EDM (engineering data management) systems which adopt versioning mechanisms (see [50] for more information about EDM and versioning mechanisms). The versioning relations between versions of business objects are captured in version graphs and the progression of particular versions is based on the states that the object may pass through (this progression being state-based is pointed out in [49]). For example, the Windchill and TiPLM systems adopt state transition diagrams to describe the states of business objects and potential state changes between these states, whereas states of business objects and possible state changes between these states are captured through rules in Teamcenter.…”

Integrated Product and Process Development Mode Based on Models Coupling

“…coupling [3]. The validity of coupling will determine the quality of product development and avail process collaboration, management and optimization [4].…”

A Graph-Based System for Managing Configurations of Engineering Design Documents

“…), manufacturing plans (CAP), NC programs (CAM), material requirements definitions, results of FEM simulations (CAE), etc. The CoMa tools play a central role in the SUKITS system; for further details, the reader is referred to [60].…”