Regine W. Vroom

An industry approach to shared, cross-organisational engineering change handling - The road towards standards for product data processing

Abstract Standards for cross-enterprise communication between systems that actively manage product data and which control the associated workflows–including release and approval processes–have been in industrial use for some time. Experiences gained during the last decade showed that purely data centric approaches, such as supported by IGES, ISO 10303 (STEP) and IFC are not sufficient. Cross-enterprise communication requires not only agreements about data format and semantics, but also about orderly procedures for efficient communication between the stakeholders in a workflow. This paper presents the background and approach taken for the development of a standard for cross-company engineering change management (ECM), which is currently undertaken as a joint activity between VDA (German Association of the Automotive Industry) and ProSTEP iViP (international association for information integration in industry). Based on the results of this joint activity, which was recently published as SASIG ECM Recommendation V2.0 and as VDA 4965 V3.0, ECM Pilot implementations within member companies were conducted. They proved that a lead-time reduction of the engineering change process of 20%–40% is possible while the quality of the process increases. The approach itself should work not only in engineering change or product data environments, but also in document oriented environments as well as in sectors other than automotive. The ECM standard provides specifications of reference business processes, including the definition of the participants’ roles and the interaction and synchronization (“touch”) points where data are communicated. It leverages and builds on other established product data standards wherever possible. Thus, the data model defined by STEP AP214, (Core Data for automotive mechanical design processes) is used to describe the “payload”–i.e. the product data content to be exchanged–at defined synchronization points. OMG’s PLM Services provide the framework for sending messages between the stakeholders of an Engineering Change, and business process modelling languages such as e.g. BPEL (Business Process Execution Language), standardized by OASIS, provide the capability to execute the ECM protocol’s specification. They ensure the ability to use the latest state-of-the-art internet technologies such as XML and web-services.

Ubiquitous computer aided design

As a novel computational approach, ubiquitous computing was emerging at the beginning of the 1980s and has reached a rather mature level by now. It assumes that computing can be available anywhere, anytime and in any context due to technological developments, social demands and calm implementations. Over the years, the opportunities of this computing paradigm have been explored and the benefits have been exploited successfully in many application fields. This survey paper addresses ubiquitous computing from the perspective of enabling computer aided design. The specific objectives of the reported survey are to: (i) give an overall account of the current status of ubiquitous computing and technologies, (ii) cast light on how ubiquitous computing has influenced the development of CAD systems, tools, and methods, and (iii) critically investigate future development opportunities of ubiquitous computing enabled computer aided design. First, the paper discusses the principles and typical technologies of ubiquitous computing. Then, the development and spectrum of the so-called standard computer aided design tasks are analyzed from a computational point of view. Afterwards, the already implemented design enabling functionalities are discussed and some additional functional possibilities are considered. The literature provides evidence that ubiquitous computing has not managed to revolutionize the methodologies or the systems of computer aided design so far, though many researchers intensively studied the affordances and the application possibilities of ubiquitous technologies. One reason is that ubiquitous computing technologies had in the last two decades to compete with other kinds of computational technologies, such as high-capacity computing, high-speed networking, immersive virtual reality, knowledge ontologies, smart software agents, mobile communication, etc., which had a much stronger influence on the development of computer aided design methods and systems. In combination with the rather conservative and conventionalist industrial practice of CAD system development and application, this may explain why the ubiquitous computing revolution remained weak in computer aided design. The literature clearly indicates that application of ubiquitous technologies did not lead to radically new functionalities that could have been exploited by the concerned industries. Consequently, it seems to be possible that computer aided design simply steps over the paradigm of ubiquitous computing and expects new functionalities from the emerging new computing paradigms, such as brain-computer interfacing, cyber-physical computing, biological computing, or quantum computing. An overall account of the status of ubiquitous computing and technologies in CAD.Penetration of ubiquitous computing remained insignificant in most applications.Application of ubiquitous technologies did not lead to radically new functionalities.Computer aided design steps over the paradigm of ubiquitous computing.New CAD functionalities expected from the emerging new computer paradigms.

A general example model for automotive suppliers of the development process and its related information

Abstract This paper describes preliminary results of a doctoral research project that aims to determine which information — created and/or used by industrial design engineering — should be available, and where and when and how, in order to enable the management of the information and to improve the product and process development process by adjusting it to the information requirements. The structure for the representation of engineering and product information together with the product and process development process and its actors is given by a metamodel which consists of three objects and eight diagrams. The three objects — Activity, Information and Subject — form a three-dimensional model of a company and contain the information to generate automatically the majority of the (two-dimensional) diagrams. These diagrams offer insight into and an overview of the relationships between information, design processes (activities) and subjects (companys organization). A software tool was developed to ease and accelerate the use of the metamodel. Subsequently, three automotive suppliers were analyzed and compared by using the tool in which the metamodel is incorporated. This resulted in the construction of a more general example model of product and engineering data and the activities within a development process. Both the metamodel and the tool are described in this paper. Further, the distinction between product data and engineering data is explained, this is based on four types of data within the information part of the metamodel. Finally, a more general example model of engineering and product information and its associated development process activities is presented.

The application of STEP in the automotive supply chain

Abstract To improve the possibilities for the electronic exchange of product information, European car makers are involved in the development of STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data). It is likely that STEP will be implemented within the automotive industry soon. TNO Product Centre and the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering of Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, jointly initiated a research project to find out if STEP is also applicable within the automotive supply chain. Data were gathered from automotive suppliers by the use of interviews and a questionnaire. The survey showed, that most of the problems with product data exchange between suppliers and customers relate to different organizational patterns for product development. Four types of suppliers are presented, each having specific requirements according to product development organization and product data exchange. STEP, which applies to the technical problems with product data exchange, can only be used effectively when the organizational problems with product development processes have been triggered.

Defining the Phenomenon of Mental Models for Critical Events

People use cognitive representations in order to characterize, understand, reason and predict the surrounding world. A class of these representations are called mental models. Designers of informing systems are interested in how mental models influence decision making, especially during critical events. With this knowledge they could optimize the content and amount of information that is needed for a dependable decision making process. New insights are needed about the operation of mental models in the course of critical events, as well as on how informing influences the real life operationalization of mental models. Most of the definitions available in the literature are overly general, and no definition was found that would support the design of informing systems for critical events. Therefore, the objective of our research was to derive a definition of mental models that play a role in critical events. Actually, we systematically constructed a definition from those attributes of mental model descriptions that were found to be relevant to critical events. First we decomposed 125 published descriptions to a set of attributes, and then assessed each attribute to see if they were associated with critical events, or not. In fact, this analysis involved not only the relevance of the attributes to critical events, but also the frequency of occurrence in the surveyed papers. This exploration provided a large number of attributes for a new mental model definition. Based on the top rated attributes, a definition was synthesized which, theoretically, has a strong relation to critical events. Though further validation will be needed, we argue that the derived mental model definition is strong because it establishes relationships with all generic features of critical events and makes the related information contents explicit. Hence the proposed definition can be considered a starting platform for investigations of the influence of informing on decision making processes in critical events.Copyright

Sharing relevant knowledge within product development

An Open Content (OC) repository that has a formal knowledge structure, but which allows users to share across organisational boundaries, could solve existing knowledge search problems. However, such a repository will still need to have boundaries set for its contents to stay relevant. Because users of the repository may author and edit the repository’s content, it is necessary to discuss which information is relevant to the intended field. A repository for Industrial Design Engineering serves as an example case. The authors propose a framework for discourse, based on descriptions of the field in terms of product areas, disciplines and design aspects.

Developing a Conceptual Design Engineering Toolbox and its Tools

In order to develop a successful product, a design engineer needs to pay attention to all relevant aspects of that product. Many tools are available, software, books, websites, and commercial services. To unlock these potentially useful sources of knowledge, we are developing C-DET, a toolbox for conceptual design engineering. The idea of C-DET is that designers are supported by a system that provides them with a knowledge portal on one hand, and a system to store their current work on the other. The knowledge portal is to help the designer to find the most appropriate sites, experts, tools etc. at a short notice. Such a toolbox offers opportunities to incorporate extra functionalities to support the design engineering work. One of these functionalities could be to help the designer to reach a balanced comprehension in his work. Furthermore C-DET enables researchers in the area of design engineering and design engineers themselves to find each other or their work earlier and more easily. Newly developed design tools that can be used by design engineers but have not yet been developed up to a commercial level could be linked to by C-DET. In this way these tools can be evaluated in an early stage by design engineers who would like to use them. This paper describes the first prototypes of C-DET, an example of the development of a design tool that enables designers to forecast the use process and an example of the future functionalities of C-DET such as balanced comprehension.

Instruments to Visualize Design Engineering Working Methods in Automotive Supplier Companies

Before implementing a PDM-system within a company, the internal processes of product and process development and the information handled herein should be organized well. To enable this organization, one should be able to see the bottlenecks. Therefore the working methods and the documents involved should be made transparent. That is why the development processes of three automotive suppliers are analyzed and documented in three representations, formatted according to a generic scheme, to gain transparency of the processes. Based on these representations a so-called induced model of product and process development is created. In this paper, the format of the representations will be shortly explained, the application method for the realization of the representations will be described and some of the results will be illustrated. Also the research problems that came up during the research will be described.

Instruments to visualize design engineering information and activities in automotive supplier companies

Before implementing a product data management system within a company, the internal processes of product and process development and the information handled herein should be organized well. To enable this organization, one should be able to see the bottlenecks. Therefore, the working methods and the documents involved should be made transparent. That is why the development processes of three automotive suppliers have been analyzed and documented in three representations, formatted according to a generic scheme, to gain transparency of the processes. Based on these representations, a so-called induced model of product and process development is created. In this paper, which is an extension of Vroom RW et al. (2002. In PAKM 2002, LNAI 2596, Karagiannis D, Reimer U (eds). Springer: Berlin; 347–358), the format of the representations will be explained briefly, the application method for the realization of the representations will be described and some of the results will be illustrated. Also, the problems that came up during the research will be described. Copyright