Detlef Gerhard

Application of PDM technology for Product Life Cycle Management

Product data management (PDM) is an emerging enabling technology to support product life cycle (PLC) management. The first part of this paper gives an overview of general and customized isolated PDM applications in different stages of the PLC. The second part of the presentation surveys the main approaches for an integrated PDM throughout the PLC and shows some of the ITM as well as national and international research activities in this area, including distributed multi-system PDM environments, federated databases, web-based PDM and integrated product data and process management. Finally research activities for future integration of PDM technology in enterprise wide information repositories and workflow engines are presented.

A flexible Web-based PDM approach to support virtual engineering cooperation

The objective of the work presented in this paper is to provide a methodology and tools for distributed PDM environments especially suited for virtual project based cooperation in engineering design. A research project called WebFlex-PDM (Web-enabled Flexible PDM federation) is introduced. This project mainly deals with extensions to existing PDM systems to provide the capability for easy integration into different PDM environments of cooperation partners and to enable use of various geographically dispersed WWW-based engineering information resources. In order to analyze the requirements for a flexible management of distributed engineering information resources the paper first describes an application case study. The requirements are compared to the state of the art of distributed PDM solutions and the existing deficits are shown. Finally the main ideas, the architecture, and prototype modules of the WebFlex-PDM approach are presented.

KBE-PLM Integration Schema for Engineering Knowledge Re-use and Design Automation

The re-use of product knowledge is vital to the development of Knowledge-Based Engineering (KBE) systems and to the deployment of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) strategies. This paper addresses the challenges related to KBE-PLM systems integration in order to unlock engineering knowledge from proprietary representations and to manage the lifecycle of KBE models as well as their usage by different design automation applications. Essential constituents of product knowledge are identified and analyzed and the concepts of design intent and design rationale are re-introduced as key enablers to re-use this product knowledge in the appropriate KBE context. The paper introduces a KBE-PLM integration framework including a platform-independent Open KBE repository structured according to the KBE-PLM integration schema. This schema is a multi-layer neutral product and knowledge data model designed for integrating information from parameterized Computer-Aided Design (CAD) models, rule-based KBE systems and PLM systems.

PDM supported engineering design education

In Austria there is a unique curriculum of technical education which is taught at Federal Secondary Colleges of Engineering, commonly known as HTL. Since necessity of design collaboration within mechanical engineering projects between students and different colleges is given, the authors of this paper have conducted two projects to implement a PDM system for using at HTL and technical universities. This paper gives an overview of the enhanced PDM functionality, and the gained experiences.

Ontology-Based Integration of Heterogeneous Material Data Resources in Product Lifecycle Management

In the context of Design for Environment (DfE) in product development, material selection is particularly important for the product. It affects its design, its manufacturing process, and the environmental impacts over its life cycle phases [1]. For technical or functional reasons, specific materials with best fitting characteristics are needed. Yet, their extraction and manufacturing process causes a substantial negative environmental impact. Material information are split or hidden in many different sources inside a company within various departments and also outside, e.g. involving information from suppliers and standardization organizations. The granularity of material information, various old and new norms, varying names for the same material, and different languages pose a problem, especially international cooperation. This paper describes a research approach for an ontology-based integration of heterogeneous material data resources from different stages of the product lifecycle.

Multi-Disciplinary Engineering for Cyber-Physical Production Systems

This book discusses challenges and solutions for the required information processing and management within the context of multi-disciplinary engineering of production systems. The authors consider methods, architectures, and technologies applicable in use cases according to the viewpoints of product engineering and production system engineering, and regarding the triangle of (1) product to be produced by a (2) production process executed on (3) a production system resource. With this book industrial production systems engineering researchers will get a better understanding of the challenges and requirements of multi-disciplinary engineering that will guide them in future research and development activities. Engineers and managers from engineering domains will be able to get a better understanding of the benefits and limitations of applicable methods, architectures, and technologies for selected use cases. IT researchers will be enabled to identify research issues related to the development of new methods, architectures, and technologies for multi-disciplinary engineering, pushing forward the current state of the art.

The Role of Semantic Technologies in Future PLM

The paper describes research efforts to address three core problems of the complete process of product creation from an IT perspective and especially focusing on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). Today’s major challenges are the support of globally distributed and multi-disciplinary teams, complexity, and enterprise knowledge management. Essential building block for new approaches to cope with these challenges is the use of semantic technologies for the supportive IT environments. There are different aspects to be considered, integration of social software and community development in the context of open innovation and crowd sourcing as well as context driven enrichment of data and adaptive application integration. The aim of this contribution is to give a comprehensive overview of the requirements resulting from today’s challenges and to introduce an approach to future IT working environment for engineers in the sense of organic computing (OC). Furthermore, the paper shows how Semantic Web technologies can contribute to more individual and flexible engineering application integration and knowledge management.

An Ontological Approach for the Integration of Life Cycle Assessment into Product Data Management Systems

The consideration of environmental aspects into product design is becoming more and more a key strategic feature of products. However, the inclusion of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Eco design aspects in design is still far from being common practice. The complexity of the task, time-consumption and additional workload during design process may be some reasons therefore. There have been some efforts to integrate LCA in CAD systems and Product Data Management systems (PDM) to ease the handling of data and to assist the designer. However, these concepts suffer from inflexible data and database structures which are difficult to maintain and to update, in particular when complex products are designed in collaborative teams. This chapter presents an ontological approach to include environmental data in PDM systems. This approach reduces complexity of data structures, eases the use of environmental assessment methods and eases the sharing of product relevant information.

Forecasting Environmental Profiles in the Early Stages of Product Development by Using an Ontological Approach

Considering environmental aspects in early product development stages is a complex endeavor. Product life cycle data are fuzzy and subject to changes. Additional workload due to data handling is a common reason why it is withdrawn by engineering designers. Some studies suggest parameterization of products in order to gain a limited set of parameters to handle, some others suggest integration of Life Cycle Assessment into CAD or Product Data Management systems. However, the handling of heterogeneous data from multiple sources is not paid much attention. This paper suggests an ontological approach that allows considering data from multiple sources to set up an environmental profile of the product and allow for adaptations in the product concept.

Application of Product Data Management Technology for Enterprise- Wide Distributed Product Development

The paper gives a comprehensive overview and a classification of the fundamentals and the current state of the art of Product Data Management (PDM) technology regarding the support of distributed product development. Based on experiences and results of actual industrial projects, the requirements for distributed product development are presented. Considering these demands, different application approaches for building a distributed PDM solution using commercially available systems as well as methods for the replication and exchange of product data under consideration of existing standards are introduced and evaluated. Finally the demands for further developments concerning tools and methods, and standardisation are addressed and a new research approach of ITM, Bochum with special respect to flexibility and ease of implementation is shown.