Application of object-oriented UML technique for product data management: a case study in steel industry

Abstract

Due to the rapid development of information technology (IT) recently, the enterprises would adopt the IT to improve or increase the marketing competitiveness. As IT is applied by enterprises, documentation is an important asset for business management. All kinds of documents including technical manuals or user guides are produced during the life cycle of a product. All these documents may significantly relate to business activities such as design, manufacturing or marketing etc. So, how to manage and apply the asset of documents is very important to a corporation. Product data management (PDM) information system is therefore developed and implemented. The purpose of this paper is to propose a model for construction of PDM using object-oriented technique. The model is developed from the aspects of organisation architecture, operational procedure, document and system architecture. The unified modelling language (UML) technique is applied to build an integrated PDM modelling architecture. The proposed PDM modelling is developed on the basis of organisational architecture, process flow, documentation and product structure. Six diagrammatic notations in the UML technique are used to depict the structure of the PDM model. Applications in a company of the steel industry illustrate the details of the proposed processes for the modelling of a PDM system. The result of the case study reveals that the applicability and advantage of the proposed methodology are acceptable.