PLM Architecture Research Articles

From tears to tiers – architectural principles for federated PLM landscapes

AbstractPLM systems are key enabling systems in the development of today's products. Introduction of a new PLM capability is an expensive and risky undertaking. Many implementation projects end in tears in the sense that they are frequently late or even cancelled. In this paper, a federated PLM architecture pattern – Genesis – is introduced and evaluated against prevalent PLM approaches. From an architecture perspective, Genesis with its two distinct integration tiers decrease the number of integration points and thus cost and complexity.

Using Product and Manufacturing System Platforms to Generate Producible Product Variants

Product platforms have proven efficient as a means to reduce lead-time and increase product quality simultaneously. When using platforms to generate a family of products, the number of variants that need to be managed in manufacturing increases. To succeed with this, the manufacturing system needs to be maintained in a similar level of flexibility as the product platform. However, there is seldom a joint decision behind each and every conceptual product variant during development, regarding capability in manufacturing. For example, when considering producibility, some product variants require better tolerances than what the manufacturing processes can deliver. This uncertainty can be reduced, by making producibility analyses of a set of conceptual product variants. By performing several different analyses, knowledge can be gained, and joint decisions can be made about cross product-manufacturing aspects. The activities can be systematically arranged to gradually eliminate unfeasible conceptual product variants. In this paper we show how an integrated PLM architecture can be used to create sufficient knowledge as a basis for joint product and manufacturing decisions. The utmost company benefit of this is to reduce lead-time by taking manufacturing capability into account when developing product families.

Flexible PLM architecture as an enabler for multidisciplinary engineering

This paper presents three case studies conducted at three independent automotive OEMs in Sweden: their purpose was to investigate the need for multidisciplinary integration in the product development process as well as the resulting engineering requirements on the PLM architecture. It is concluded on the basis of the three cases analysed that a flexible PLM architecture has the potential to fulfil the engineering need for flexibility and specialised tool support while maintaining well–documented data integration across companies. It also has the best potential to offer support over time, as local systems can be upgraded and replaced independently.

Features of data management in PLM customised for ship design adopting engineering to order strategy

Appropriate PLM system should be implemented with consideration of the design and manufacturing features of the industry. Data management of PLM system for ship design is discussed to reflect the characteristics of product design as well as the manufacturing strategy adopted by shipbuilding. Assuming shipbuilding industries adopt an ETO strategy significantly different from ATO, requirements for the functional applications, product structures, and architectures of shipbuilding PLM are discussed in order to appropriately implement the PLM for shipbuilding industry. The present paper suggests the functional applications and architecture of PLM for ship design process after the features of PLM for both the automotive and shipbuilding industry are compared. Thereafter, PLM architecture that considers the differences between ATO and ETO industries is discussed by the perspective view of data management in beginning of life.

Implementing a service-oriented PLM architecture focusing on support for engineering change management

The aim of the study is to implement a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and evaluate its applicability to an industrial case, using PLM services 2.0. This paper focuses on IT support for engineering change management (ECM). ECM is a cross-functional process including several technology fields and life cycle stages. The product information is accessible from a service layer where it is either used directly by the user or provided as input to knowledge-based engineering (KBE) applications which simulate and analyse the impact of an engineering change. It is concluded that SOA is an efficient architecture that enables integration of KBE applications. PLM services 2.0 is a competent new standard that needs improvements regarding documentation and more detail. In general, it can be concluded that it is necessary to invest more in data management and support capabilities, and that SOA contributes to taking better control of the business logic in comparison with other PLM architectures.