A Survey of PDM Implementation Projects in Selected Swedish Industries

Technology and engineering might be characterized as becoming more knowledge-intensive. A huge amount of data is used and produced in most product development projects. Increasing competition requires shorter reaction time to customer demands and a higher level of innovation. Concurrent Engineering (CE) is a strategic response to competition. It has proved to be a powerful approach to integrating engineering activities in product development. However, integration and parallel activities, that is the essence of CE, add complexity to the process. Consequently, information management is recognized as a major component in many CE models. Product Data Management (PDM) systems are a class of computer based systems that address the need to manage product related information that is mainly formal and computer interpretable. PDM systems are sometimes referred to as CE enablers. Results from a resent survey of PDM implementation projects in six Swedish industrial companies, with products ranging from telecommunications systems to trucks and medical equipment, indicate the importance of also utilizing the Concurrent Engineering (CE) approach in the process of implementing an enterprise-wide PDM solution.

Architectures of Concurrent Engineering System for Composites

The demand for the better quality products with shorter lead-time and lower life-cycle cost forces the manufacturing enterprises all around the world to optimize their production strategies from both enterprise engineering and enterprise operation respectively. This paper addresses the architectural issue of applying the Concurrent Engineering (CE) approach in the composite manufacturing area. It first discussed briefly the characteristics of composite manufacturing process to examine the feasibility and possibility of applying the CE approach to improve its process productivity and product quality. Then the functional requirements for a concurrent engineering system for composites (CESC) were defined from both operational and architectural points of view. Finally, the integrated infrastructure based system architectures for the CESC were presented in accordance with the physical system requirements, and so were the associated and currently conducted R&D focuses for the system.

Effects of Collocation on the Integrated Product Team and the Impact on Cost, Schedule, and Risk

Program Managers need to look beyond the veil of potential benefits to assess the risks of contractor proposed concurrent engineering efforts. The mere mention of concurrent engineering or its synonym, integrated product team, does not in itself reduce program schedule and cost. Evaluations should center upon the offeror’s past success with these initiatives and the fundamental steps leading to their implementation. In a recent study of several programs involving the manufacture of Aircraft Launch and Recovery Equipment (ALRE) and support equipment, the effects of integrated product teams were assessed. Several of the programs studied had been competitively awarded to contractors that subsequently defaulted on their contract. The equipment programs were then successfully manufactured by the Prototyping and Manufacturing department at Naval Air Warfare Center, Lakehurst, NJ. Data from the study indicated the success of the manufacture was directly attributable to the use of integrated product teams. Extensive communication between engineering, manufacturing, and testing teams led to the resolution of problems quickly. Face to face meetings were frequent and issues were resolved in minutes without resorting to technical memorandums or other protracted written documents. Collocation of the team members was considered the most critical factor to gaining any benefits from concurrent engineering. Further evidence indicated the more complex a system, the more collocation was critical to its successful completion. Complexity, when measured by the number of parts, critical interfaces, and final testing requirements, was assessed for each program. The more complex programs had employed more frequent and local communication.

A Grammar Driven Data Translation System for Computer Integrated Manufacturing

Integration of engineering software continues to be an important topic in mechanical design and manufacturing. One integration technique which has been proposed is to store a complete product representation in a single database using a database management system. In order to integrate existing CAE applications which are not designed for use with a DBMS, a method for importing and exporting data to the database is needed. A system for recognizing and translating a large class of engineering data, those data formats which can be described by regular grammars, is proposed.

Enabling Concurrent Engineering Through Collaborative Product and Process Data Management

This paper presents a collaborative data management framework which is capable of supporting information sharing and team data management in concurrent team-oriented product and process development by providing functions for project configuration, personal product and process item management, and team library management. Establishing this framework involves: (i) identification of functional requirements for computer-aided engineering data management through the investigation of concurrent product delivery process, with an emphasis on product and process development, (ii) use of system engineering and object-oriented modeling techniques for development of the proposed framework.

Total Value Management: A New Trend Beyond Total Quality Management (TQM)

One of the pitfall of total quality management (TQM) is that it is based on a single measurement, which has mostly been “quality” or “quality-driven.” Today manufacturing sectors are much more fiercely competitive and global than ever before. Consumers are more demanding, competition is more global, fierce and ruthless, and technology is advancing (and changing) rapidly. The quality-based philosophy inherent in TQM does not account for the shrinking time factor inherent in today’s complex product design, development and delivery (PD3) process. The competitors are always finding better and faster ways of doing things. Catching up in quality is not enough to be a world-class leader in manufacturing. It only makes a company at par with its competitors in terms of inheriting some of their product’s quality characteristics. But relatively speaking it gets you there only after a few years later. What is required is a total control of one’s own process — that is to identify and satisfy the needs and expectations of consumers better than the competitions and to do so profitably faster than any other competitor. Competition has driven organization to consider concepts such as time compression (fast-to-market), concurrent engineering, design for X-ability, and tools and technology (such as Taguchi, Value Engineering, QFD, etc.) while designing and developing an artifact. Quality — as in TQM — addresses aspects of “quality” with reference to the functions a product has to perform. But, this is one of the many value characteristics that need to be considered by a world-class manufacturer. With conventional TQM process, it is difficult to address all aspects of Total Values Management (TVM) such as X-ability, cost, tools and technology, responsiveness and organization issues. It is not enough to include “Quality” into a product or process and expect the outcome to be a world-class. TVM efforts are vital in maintaining a competitive edge in today’s global marketplace. The question is how to address all value aspects of this TVM? This is what discussed in this paper. A new concurrent PD3 process for TVM methodology is proposed, which accounts for concurrency — paralleling of value characteristics — along with a methodology for their systematic deployments.

Design and Implementation of an Object-Oriented Cooperative Distributed Problem Solving Shell

In this paper an Object-Oriented Cooperative Distributed Problem Solving Shell (OOCDPSS) is presented. It is a convenient and effective building tool for the cooperative multi-agent application systems under distributed computer environment. By the Distributed Artificial Intelligence technique and the Object-Oriented concept, each agent is constructed by multi-layer structure to reduce the design complexity and give more flexibility, and they are arranged as a recurrent group structure for run-time effective management. Additionally, the idea of mediator is adopted to integrate new information systems with the existing inflexible legacy system, and the distributed whiteboard agent is used for the information interchange among the agents. This prototype system has been completed and used as the test bed of our other laboratory projects.

Conceptual Product Development

The importance of conceptual modelling more and more becomes recognized in the industrial practice, since it is commonly known that it is during that phase of the product development process where fundamental choices are made that have a strong influence on the result of the development — the process! The process of product development can only be efficient if it is basically put into practice methodically. The time additionally invested in the first steps of the methodical process of product development as it is described in the German guideline VDI 2221 prevents from forgetting important specifications or even overseeing possible ways of solution. This way the phase of conceptual modelling can result in a saving of time needed for product development due to fewer iteration loops for the correction of mistakes in later phases of the process and an increase of the product quality, too. The prerequisite of the efficiency of conceptual modelling is a definition of the product specifications which is as precise as necessary and as abstract as possible in order not to restrict the amount of solutions in an unnecessary way. Looking at the functions a product to be developed has to fulfill, the requirements list serves as a basis for the definition of function structures in which all functions and the relationships amongst each other are defined. This function structure can be utilized not only for the description of the product in an abstract way, but also for structuring the development process as well. With the definition of interfaces between parts of the product, implicitly interface specifications for the work on different parts of the product are defined. The function structure, therefore, can be used as a tool for management in the product development process. Because of this, the information summarised in these documents must be available throughout the entire development process the information technological support of these tools should be standard. Nevertheless, common CAD-Software does not support any step of conceptual modelling. In this paper an information technological support for conceptual modelling is also presented. Furthermore, it is shown what kind of changes in and extensions of common CAX-Systems would be necessary for the realisation of this theory.

A Comparison of Equality Constraint Formulations for Concurrent Design Optimization

This paper investigates a concurrent approach for design optimization. The method of Simultaneous ANalysis and Design (SAND) is tested in application to three Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) test problems. A Generalized Reduced Gradient (GRG) optimizer and a Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) optimizer are compared with respect to their efficacy in handling three different forms of equality constraints referred to as compatibility constraints in the SAND based optimization procedure. Results highlight the need for both strategies in application of SAND based design to different engineering test problems. More importantly significant savings in the number of analyses required for design optimization are observed when using the SAND approach of concurrent design. SAND based design delivers on the promise of concurrent engineering, namely to develop optimal designs, working concurrently, while reducing design cycle time.

Integration Infrastructure to Support Concurrence and Collaboration in Engineering Design

Traditionally, CAD tools have provided limited possibilities for interaction between different participants in a design project. This paper describes an environment for information integration of CAD systems and other application programs referred to as meta-level design information system. Taxonomies of CAD and other application programs with regards to their “integration friendliness” and possibilities for remote access by the enduser are developed. These taxonomies can be used by CAD vendors as a guidance for development of software which can be integrated easier in a higher-level design information system. In this work the taxonomies are used to catalogue the applications and their data. The information integration infrastructure is based on an object-oriented multidatabase using the WWW to transfer the transactions. An information broker provides a global conceptual view of data and knowledge stored in a metadatabase including description of product data and design constraints, design process, organizational information, etc. It processes user queries and dynamically accesses the information from CAD tools (which act as objects on the WWW) if needed. The CAD tools interface is provided by software network adapters. They export parts of the local application models needed for maintaining intertool constraints and supporting remote queries by participants in the design process who do not have direct access to the CAD systems.