Product Lifecycle Management Systems Research Articles

XML-based neutral file and PLM integrator for PPR information exchange between heterogeneous PLM systems

PLM (product lifecycle management) is an innovative manufacturing paradigm which allows company's engineering contents to be developed and integrated with all business processes in the extended enterprise throughout the product lifecycle. This allows engineering decisions to be made with a full understanding of the product and its portfolio, including processes, resources, and plants. For today's manufacturing industries, support from software systems is essential for the creation, management, and coordination of all manufacturing-related information. Generally, PDM (product data management) systems are extended to PLM systems to manage all PPR (product, process, resource) information throughout the product lifecycle. To implement PLM in an environment where many different information management systems are being used, an application to exchange data, files, and information between heterogeneous PLM systems is essential, and a standard file format for the exchanges is extremely desirable. In this paper, PPRX is defined as a standard data format using XML for a neutral file containing PPR information, and PLM integrator, which supports PPR information exchanges between commercial heterogeneous PLM systems and other systems is developed. With the proposed implementation and a case study for an automotive company, exchanges of PPR information can be made without loss, which reduces unnecessary effort and helps successful implementation of PLM by supporting effective integration and information sharing.

Improving reverse logistics processes using item-level product life cycle management

Sustainability is a key issue for companies offering products and services on the global market. The ever-increasing worldwide demand for raw materials in combination with the rising costs for materials and energy challenges companies to make their products, processes and services more sustainable. More and more customers are demanding sustainable products and services due to their increased awareness about environmental protection. By providing access to data, information and knowledge about products and services the concept of product life cycle management (PLM) can be applied to reverse logistics processes to improve sustainability. The term PLM and, therefore, the functionality of existing PLM systems must be considered as quite different. This paper introduces the concept of item-level PLM. It investigates the requirements that item-level PLM systems must fulfil in order to support sustainability in reverse logistics processes in an appropriate manner. Existing item-level PLM solutions are then investigated according to their suitability in the field of reverse logistics.

Linking design and manufacturing domains via web-based and enterprise integration technologies

The manufacturing industry faces many challenges such as reducing time-to-market and cutting costs. In order to meet these increasing demands, effective methods are need to support the early product development stages by bridging the gap of communicating early design ideas and the evaluation of manufacturing performance. This paper introduces methods of linking design and manufacturing domains using disparate technologies. The combined technologies include knowledge management supporting for product lifecycle management systems, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, aggregate process planning systems, workflow management and data exchange formats. A case study has been used to demonstrate the use of these technologies, illustrated by adding manufacturing knowledge to generate alternative early process plan which are in turn used by an ERP system to obtain and optimise a rough-cut capacity plan.

Methods for the capture of manufacture best practice in product lifecycle management

The capture of manufacturing best practice knowledge in product lifecycle management systems has significant potential to improve the quality of design decisions and minimise manufacturing problems during new product development. However, providing a reusable source of manufacturing best practice is difficult due to the complexity of the viewpoint relationships between products and the manufacturing processes and resources used to produce them. This paper discusses how best to organise manufacturing best practice knowledge, the relationships between elements of this knowledge plus their relationship to product information. The paper also explores the application of UML-2 as a system design tool which can model these relationships and hence support the reuse of system design models over time. The paper identifies a set of part family and feature libraries and, most significantly, the relationships between them, as a means of capturing best practice manufacturing knowledge and illustrates how these can be linked to manufacturing resource models and product information. Design for manufacture and machining best practice views are used in the paper to illustrate the concepts developed. An experimental knowledge based system has been developed and results generated using a power transmission shaft example.

Interoperability Between PLM and RoHS Compliance Management Based on XML and Smart Client

Nowadays, more and more companies are going to adapt themselves to restriction on the use of certain hazardous substances (RoHS) compliance and enforcement by leveraging product lifecycle management (PLM) technology. The paper presents a general framework that integrates the bill of material extensible markup language (XML) files from heterogeneous PLM systems to RoHS compliance management system. This framework is based on the use of Smart Client technology to obtain flexibility required for complex and distributed environments. It also makes use of XML technology and data structure to obtain reuse and robustness.

Modeling framework for product lifecycle information

This paper presents a modeling framework for product lifecycle information. Although being widely used in enterprises’ virtual product data management, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems are unable to manage the modeling and simulation aspects of virtual products. To reinforce the sharing and management of the product lifecycle information, especially the simulation data, a product’s four-dimensional (4D) view model (PLIM) is established, which includes geometry view, task view, virtual prototype system view and lifecycle view. To provide efficient and effective simulation information, the prototype system view is then studied in detail. Finally, to validate the feasibility of the modeling framework, a prototype system is developed based on an application example, with the demonstration of 4D product lifecycle information model (PLIM).

Classification of RFID adoption: An expected benefits approach

While expected benefits have been seen as one of the main drivers of RFID adoption, there is little understanding of what benefits should be considered when exploring RFID adoption. Further, the relationships between expected benefits and the type of adoption has not been systematically delineated. We identified cost savings, supply chain visibility, and new process creation as the three key benefits of RFID adoption and then identified the “scale” and “scope” of RFID implementation as the key dimensions of RFID adoption. Based on these, we proposed a four-category classification for the type of RFID adoption. Finally we showed how the three expected benefits are associated with the scale and scope of adoption. In particular, the findings highlighted the significant potential of RFID when it is integrated with other technologies such as global positioning or product life cycle management systems. Under various situations, a firm may perceive different benefits and value some benefits more than the others; this combination leads the firm to choose a certain type of RFID application. The model was validated using secondary case data from seven organizations that had adopted RFID.

PLM education in production design and engineering by e-Learning

These days more attention is being paid to Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) using a technique for managing total product planning, design, manufacturing, sales, and disposal. We researched business processes and education curriculum of the PLM system in manufacturing businesses. We designed the curriculum of PLM education and developed part of a lesson. Most importantly, e-Learning is shown to be an effective tool for achieving educational objectives. We found that not only knowledge and theory but also practical education methods using case studies in an e-Learning environment are necessary for human resources to develop effective PLM.

Information mapping across injection moulding design and manufacture domains

The process of developing new products is complex, partly due to the wide areas of expertise that need to work together to achieve the best results. Whilst a broad range of software tools is now available to support specific areas of product development, and Product Lifecycle Management systems are starting to support information sharing, the provision of software environments that enable the sharing of information and knowledge across multiple domains of expertise is still a major issue. This paper utilises a set of engineering domain ontologies and investigates the development of mapping methods between them. The work focuses on the development of plastic injection moulded products and has used the particular domains of mouldability, mould cavity design and mould cavity manufacturing to explore the mapping methods across domains. It identifies the critical requirement for mapping methods as understanding the pre-conditional knowledge that constrains the domain boundaries. Experimental mapping methods based on these requirements have been constructed and are discussed in the context of case studies in information sharing for injection moulded product development.

The construction of a collaborative-design platform to support waste electrical and electronic equipment recycling

Recycling of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is a very important subject not only from the viewpoint of waste treatment but also from the viewpoint of recovery of valuable materials. In the past, some obstacles make recycling challenging for today's manufactured products. First, it is difficult to gain all the information necessary to plan for the recycling evaluation, as most design information is owned and kept by suppliers. Another problem in recycling end-of-life (EOL) products is a lack of technologies to handle the very complex products that are being discarded today, because the knowledge of how to do so is owned by the recycler. This research demonstrates how to support WEEE recycling analysis by environmental information with the part of bill of material. A collaborative-design platform is further constructed and collected all the needed information using computer-aided design (CAD), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and product life-cycle management (PLM) systems. Through this platform, suppliers are required to provide component information to enable the manufacturer's design for disassembly and recycling analysis. The results demonstrate that designers can obtain disassembly and recycling information through the model, so that desirable changes can be made in the early stages of a design. An industrial case study from Taiwan is also provided to demonstrate the use of this model.

Combined application of Product Lifecycle and Software Configuration Management systems for ITER remote handling

The advantages of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems are widely understood among the industry and hence a PLM system is already in use by International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) Organization (IO). However, with the increasing involvement of software in the development, the role of Software Configuration Management (SCM) systems have become equally important. The SCM systems can be useful to meet the higher demands on Safety Engineering (SE), Quality Assurance (QA), Validation and Verification (V&V) and Requirements Management (RM) of the developed software tools. In an experimental environment, such as ITER, the new remote handling requirements emerge frequently. This means the development of new tools or the modification of existing tools and the development of new remote handling procedures or the modification of existing remote handling procedures. PLM and SCM systems together can be of great advantage in the development and maintenance of such remote handling system. In this paper, we discuss how PLM and SCM systems can be integrated together and play their role during the development and maintenance of ITER remote handling system. We discuss the possibility to investigate such setup at DTP2 (Divertor Test Platform 2), which is the full scale mock-up facility to verify the ITER divertor remote handling and maintenance concepts.

Functional design and optimisation of parametric CAD models in a knowledge-based PLM environment

The main purpose of this paper is to present our approach to automatically generating optimised 3D Computer-aided Design (CAD) models into which all the known expert design rules are integrated, by changing only functional requirements for the same product architecture. Through the requirement specifications integrated into our ACSP Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system (functional and product architecture parameters), we are able to generate and automatically draft/produce/test/validate/optimise a parametric product architecture and its geometric skeleton, using a commercial CAD software program. A knowledge-based engineering software program, using constraint propagation with a first-order inference engine, and a multiobjective optimisation solver are used as an interface between the PLM system and the CAD software.

Content management based on multi-agent system for collaborative design

Collaborative design methods are increasingly integrated into industrial systems in order to reduce costs and lead time, but also to improve product quality and value. Design tasks involve many actors throughout the product lifecycle, which starts with product requirements, functional specification, product modelling, manufacturing and ends with its recycling. Software supporting collaborative design, such as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems, is needed to help design team members in their project tasks. The Atelier Cooperatif de Suivi de Projet in French (ACSP) platform is a web-based PLM system. It supports the design team members in carrying out collaborative activities in product-process-design projects. An improvement of the ACSP platform has been proposed by introducing multi-agent systems at several levels of the ACSP architecture. This improvement is based on the Role, Interaction and Organisation methodology and on many FIPA specifications. By implementation of multi-agent systems for content and knowledge management in collaborative engineering, one can develop autonomy, reactivity, pro-activity and social ability in the man?machine relationships.

Decision support under uncertainties based on robust Bayesian networks in reverse logistics management

One of the major challenges for product lifecycle management systems is the lack of integrated decision support tools to help decision-making with available information in collaborative enterprise networks. Uncertainties are inherent in such networks due to lack of perfect knowledge or conflicting information. In this paper, a robust decision support approach based on imprecise probabilities is proposed. Robust Bayesian belief networks with interval probabilities are used to estimate imprecise posterior probabilities in probabilistic inference. This generic approach is demonstrated with decision-makings in design for closed-loop supply chain. The ultimate goal of robust intelligent decision support systems is to enhance the effective use of information available in collaborative engineering environments.

The use of digital mock-ups on the development of the Divertor Test Platform 2

The divertor test platform 2 (DTP2) is a full scale physical test facility intended for testing, demonstrating and refining the remote handling (RH) equipment designs with prototypes which will define the final specifications for call for tenders of ITER RH devices. The facility will also be used for training future ITER RH operators. Digital mock-ups have been extensively used for providing the reference design and manufacturing support of the cassette multi-functional mover, its assisting manipulator and other tooling. Despite DTP2 not being yet fully operational, digital mock-ups of DTP2 and its equipment, together with real-time dynamic simulation models, have been employed to perform studies and designs which will reduce the time needed for the integration and commissioning of new RH equipment delivered to the site. The use of digital mock-ups is currently being used for planning and verifying (in a 3D environment) task procedures of future RH test trials; developing and testing control software and hardware, and graphical user interfaces; estimating the duration of the different RH tasks and to obtain a realistic range of capable motions and speeds of the devices. During DTP2 operations, digital mock-ups will still be employed for improving, optimizing and validating test procedures; assess the difficulty and fatigue experienced by the operators; gather technical specifications for designs and procurements of new RH equipment. The final goal is to produce a complete digital mock-up of the divertor region and its RH equipment, including operations and tasks procedures. Due to the large amount of devices and operations to be tested at DTP2, a product lifecycle management (PLM) system and a Manufacturing Hub are being put into operation.

An Extensible Product Structure Model for Product Lifecycle Management in the Make-to-Order Environment

This article presents a product structure model for developing product lifecycle management systems that is flexible for make-to-order environment. In the make-to-order business context, each product could have a number of variants with slightly different constitutions to fulfill different customer requirements. All the variants of a family have common characteristics and each variant has its specific features. A master-variant pattern is proposed for building the product structure model to explicitly represent common characteristics and specific features of individual variants. The model is capable of enforcing the consistency of a family structure and its variant structure, supporting multiple product views, and facilitating the business processes. A prototype as a proof-of-concept system is presented to illustrate the capability of the proposed extensible product structure model.

Análise da integração entre um sistema de gestão de dados de documentos e um sistema de gestão de projetos contexto da gestão do ciclo de vida de produtos (PLM)

O emprego de sistemas de apoio à gestão do ciclo de vida dos produtos, PLM, é de suma importância para melhorar o processo de desenvolvimento de produtos, principalmente para pequenas e médias empresas. Um dos desafios é integrar as funcionalidades de gestão de projetos (GP) com os dados do produto. O trabalho analisa diferentes estratégias para a integração entre sistemas PDM (SMARTEAM) e de GP (MS Project), comumente utilizados por SME’s. A estratégia considerada mais viável foi implementada e testada. Ao final, apresentam-se considerações sobre a pesquisa de aplicativos de GP no contexto de soluções PLM. Palavras-chave: integração, gestão de projetos, workflow, PDM e PLM.

Advanced product development integration architecture: an out-of-box solution to support distributed production networks

This paper presents novel collaboration methods implemented using a centralized client/server product development integration architecture, and a decentralized peer-to-peer network for smaller and larger companies using open source solutions. The product development integration architecture has been developed for the integration of disparate technologies and software systems for the benefit of collaborative work teams in design and manufacturing. This will facilitate the communication of early design and product development within a distributed and collaborative environment. The novelty of this work is the introduction of an ‘out-of-box’ concept which provides a standard framework and deploys this utilizing a proprietary state-of-the-art product lifecycle management system (PLM). The term ‘out-of-box’ means to modify the product development and business processes to suit the technologies rather than vice versa. The key business benefits of adopting such an approach are a rapidly reconfigurable network and minimal requirements for software customization to avoid systems instability.

Implementation of collaborative design processes into PLM systems

Design coordination means project structuring in relation with local objectives identification, resources assignment, task scheduling and performance criteria definition. In small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the design process is generally described at a macro-level which does not fully correspond to the complexity of the real process. A business approach for coordinating design process through the implementation of product life-cycle management (PLM) systems is proposed for improving design coordination in SMEs. Firstly, this business approach is based on a method for analysing informal collaborative practices and modelling detailed design processes. Secondly, these processes are implemented by using PLM technologies. Multi-level workflows are implemented to control progress of design schedule from project management level to document life-cycle management level. Subprocess generation and synchronisation tasks are used to synchronise them from one level to another and 'flexibility nodes' identify choices between different task sequences. An experiment validates the feasibility of this business approach.

Organisational management of project and technical knowledge over fleet lifecycles

Complex engineered products are all knowledge intensive. It is crucial for suppliers and operators of such “fl eets” of equipment to manage and minimise product costs and risks. Many schedule delays, cost overruns, accidents, excessive operating costs, and premature product failures result from ineffective management of product data, information, and knowledge. This paper reviews solutions based on integrating structured authoring and product lifecycle management systems and data warehousing implemented by a large project engineering and management organisation and the development of an alliance organisational form to support the product to reduce costs, risks and hazards through comprehensive and coherent management of project data, information and knowledge.