Process integration method by using BOM multi-view mapping techniques in BIW production

Abstract

BIW (Body in White) is an important component of cars, and bills of material play a key role in the design and manufacture of BIW. BOM can function as a base frame for integration of enterprise's activities involved in the whole lifecycle of products, and especially as a bridge for data integration among various application systems. The planning work of the manufacturing process of BIW is quite complex, and the technical demand is very sophisticated, because there exists too much information and data of each kind. In integrated manufacturing process, BOM(Bill of Material), as a product structure format and data document that computer can recognize, not only connect engineering and industry design but also play a important role in the connection of process design and management. After careful analysis of the characters of the product structure and the related BOM hierarchy of this kind of product, this paper devises three kinds of BOM views and the corresponding methods for manipulating these views. Next this paper presents the implementing method for mapping different BOW multi-views by using certain efficient system developing tools. At the end an example is given to explain how the multi-views are used to organize the great variety of data. The results show that the method can work efficiently and conveniently to deal with the huge amount of information needed at each stage in the whole lifecycle of the Car Body. It can provide convenient access to all kinds of product-related data, and finally achieve seamless integration of CAD/CAPP/CAE and successfully solved the harassing problems involved in the planning of the BIW production lines and the management during the manufacturing process.