Product Lifecycle Management Systems Research Articles

Green PLM: business goals-oriented algorithm assessing the greenness of a product in the new product development phase for the automotive industry

AbstractSustainability-oriented new product development process is becoming of key importance in many sectors of the industry. Especially in the automotive industry, it plays a major role as this sector is historically associated with resource-intensive production and fossil fuel consumption, and thus has to implement solutions that will contribute to restraint of climate change. Manufacturing companies are currently faced with the challenge of adapting their business models to changing market expectations and requirements resulting from the sustainable development path. Moreover, the development of the new digital factories and pressure from the legislators require adjustment of existing Product Lifecycle Management systems. To enhance the concept of the Green Product Lifecycle Management which is still under development, in this work we propose a new three-step methodology composed of three main steps: (1) assessing indicators’ importance for sustainable business goals and business models, (2) assessing indicators and their importance in the automotive industry, (3) assessing “greenness” of the product. This complex approach is innovative as it is based on the business-oriented perspective. Selecting suitable business goals and corresponding business models leads to the selection of the appropriate subset of green indicators. Several more aspects are taken into account in this holistic analysis: the indicator's features, relevance for the company, importance to sustainable business goals, importance in terms of subsectors of the automotive industry as well as environmental, economic, and social impact. This approach enables the company to compute the value of the greenness of the product in reference to the key green indicators.

Product LifeCycle Management System as Part of an Effective Information Management System for an Industrial Enterprise

Product LifeCycle Management System as Part of an Effective Information Management System for an Industrial Enterprise

Construction of Industrial Product Lifecycle Management System Based on CAD

Construction of Industrial Product Lifecycle Management System Based on CAD

Product lifecycle management system implementation and market responsiveness: the role of partner management capability

ABSTRACT This study contributes to clarifying how the implementation of product lifecycle management systems allow firms to improve market responsiveness due to the lack of understanding the mediating mechanisms. Empirical research that studies the mechanisms underlying the impact of product lifecycle management systems on market responsiveness has been scarce. To address the research issues, this study draws on dynamic capability view and the notion of information technology – business capability – organizational performance links to develop a theoretical model and employs empirical research methods to evaluate the model. The research results reveal that product lifecycle management system implementation allows firms to increase market responsiveness through the two enhanced partner management capabilities, namely relationship-building capability and coordination capability. By clearly identifying the underlying mechanism of product lifecycle management system-enabled market responsiveness, this study advances the current understanding of how product lifecycle management system implementation enables firms to improve market responsiveness.

Mitigating product data management challenges in the wooden single-family house industry

The housing industry faces challenges in product data management, resulting in negative effects on productivity, efficiency, and quality. The purpose of the study presented in this paper is to elaborate on requirements and functions of a support system to mitigate challenges with product data management in the wooden single-family house industry. As a support system, a pilot product lifecycle management (PLM) system was developed with functions to fulfill the requirements. The support system was installed and tested in a real-world setting, a wooden single-family house company, Company T. The paper contributes with the insights that a PLM system for industrialized house building can be developed, fulfilling the requirements in this specific industry. The functions developed were perceived to have value and could, for Company T, mitigate their challenges with product data management. The support system facilitate integration between the pilot PLM system, the building information modeling tool and the enterprise resource planning system at Company T. Based on the study carried out, the paper concludes that a PLM system is feasible, and that it might be a way to mitigate challenges with product data management in the wooden single-family house industry.

Mitigating product data management challenges in the wooden single-family house industry (REDIRECT)

The housing industry faces challenges in product data management, resulting in negative effects on productivity, efficiency, and quality. The purpose of the study presented in this paper is to elaborate on requirements and functions of a support system to mitigate challenges with product data management in the wooden single-family house industry. As a support system, a pilot product lifecycle management (PLM) system was developed with functions to fulfill the requirements. The support system was installed and tested in a real-world setting, a wooden single-family house company, Company T. The paper contributes with the insights that a PLM system for industrialized house building can be developed, fulfilling the requirements in this specific industry. The functions developed were perceived to have value and could, for Company T, mitigate their challenges with product data management. The support system facilitate integration between the pilot PLM system, the building information modeling tool and the enterprise resource planning system at Company T. Based on the study carried out, the paper concludes that a PLM system is feasible, and that it might be a way to mitigate challenges with product data management in the wooden single-family house industry.

BASIC DUTIES OF DIGITAL PRODUCTION

The term “digital manufacturing” can be interpreted quite broadly. Initially, computer-aided design systems fell under this definition. Then they began to include product life cycle management systems. It is clear that cloud technologies, additive manufacturing and augmented reality will also influence the development of digital manufacturing.

Framework for cloud product lifecycle management system: a case study of an automotive industry

PurposeProduct Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems have gained wide popularity for their role in manufacturing organizations for creating, managing and distributing product data. These systems are one of various enterprise systems which are required for smooth functioning and meeting the scaling up requirements organization. However, with introduction of cloud technology and other industry 4.0 initiatives, there has been focus on moving the on-premises IT application to the cloud. Such a move needs to be carried out by identifying and evaluating various challenges. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.Design/methodology/approachThe challenges identified through literature review have also been confirmed to be present via interview, system observation and documentation review through case study-based validation in an automotive component manufacturing industry.FindingsThe article identifies needs and challenges of cloud PLM systems and presents a generic framework for developing an approach for cloud PLM journey for an organization. The article also provides an approach for resolving the different challenges to realizing the designed system.Originality/valueThe simplified generic framework has been presented for use by industry professionals and researchers for designing cloud PLM systems that would fulfill expectations of different levels of stakeholders.

ENGINEERING GRAPH AS AN APPROACH TO SUPPORT DESIGN DECISIONS IN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

AbstractThe requirements space is increasing due to non-functional areas such as security, resilience and sustainability gaining in importance. This creates a complex and dynamic space which makes it hard for engineers to take good data driven design decisions. Increasing the quality of design decisions allows to better set up development projects and develop more successful products and services. The design can most heavily be influenced in the early design phases, where design flexibility is high and resource commitment is low. Unfortunately, the system knowledge is also low in early phases. The Engineering Graph is a concept that connects data from different internal and external sources. It allows to connect product data stored in Product Lifecycle Management systems with system models and also add external sources from the Wikimedia Knowledge Graph, World Health Organization and World Bank. This interconnected data allows the support of engineers in managing the complex and dynamic requirement space and provide high system knowledge in the early design phases to support design decisions.

Quality management integration in the functionality of product lifecycle management in energy-effective production

In the current realities, there are practices where companies use various tools and systems to plan and manage the quality of products and processes. Many of these tools and systems are disconnected from data/product information management systems to varying degrees, depending on the level of workflow automation. The disadvantage of disparate quality management tools is that repetitive issues that occur across multiple systems can make it difficult to investigate root causes by isolating related data items without being able to understand the relationships between them. The conventional method also provides energy loss in production due to extra power consumption. Redundant work to identify and fix quality issues can be done across multiple tools without an automated way to communicate what you've learned to other teams. This leads to inconsistent and incomplete solutions to problems that hinder rather than improve product and process quality. Thanks to the recent development of new technologies, many IT tools have become available on the market, among them product lifecycle management (PLM) systems, which are very popular among companies that allow them to create and support complex industrial products, including aeronautical equipment. The article provides an end-to-end solution on a platform like this, which aims to link quality to product design, sustainable development in the field of energy-effective production. This approach provides multidisciplinary teams and the broader supply chain with powerful closed-loop capabilities to identify and manage risks, improve quality, meet customer requirements, and ensure compliance with environmental health, safety, and information management requirements.

МЕТОДИЧЕСКИЕ АСПЕКТЫ ПРИМЕНЕНИЯ ЧИСЛЕННОГО ПРОЧНОСТНОГО АНАЛИЗА СИЛОВОГО КАРКАСА КВАДРОЦИКЛА

The design of an ATV structure is a complex engineering task, where the development of a load-bearing frame is one of the priorities, which requires a systematic methodology. Purely analytical approaches to calculations, the results of which can be used in the development of a threedimensional tubular frame structure, are now becoming a thing of the past, since the assumptions used in analytical methods give a significant calculation error, which makes it possible to obtain only a very approximate picture of the distribution of stresses and resulting deformations of the structure. It is also necessary to take into account that modern design technologies provide for the simultaneous use of various profiles of not only round, but also more complex sections, which should provide the necessary functionality of different sections of the frame (while providing a sufficiently large number of structural requirements for it), but significantly complicates the calculation procedures. With such input data, preliminary virtual electronic simulation of real products in combination with subsequent numerical engineering analysis is optimal and allows taking into account various design and technological nuances. Such software systems as CATIA related to PLM-systems (PLM – English product lifecycle management system) make it possible to perform both product modeling and, in fact, a series of numerical experiments within a single interactive environment. In the conditions of real design at the production facilities, such works are methodologically undeveloped and innovative. The purpose of the article is to consider approaches to optimizing the design of the power frame of an ATV using software computer engineering analysis tools and a previously created electronic geometric model of an ATV. In particular, the issues of preparing a model for subsequent finite element partitioning, evaluating the results of a numerical study in relation to evaluating the performance of the designed power frame of an ATV under the conditions of using the component base of previously developed power frames of motorcycles and buggies are touched upon.

An Analytic Hierarchy Process for Selection of Blockchain-Based Platform for Product Lifecycle Management

Blockchain technology has disrupted traditional business processes and hence gained significant attention and popularity in recent years. Consequently, a number of blockchain-based platforms are available today that offer vast applications across multiple sectors and industries. Implementing these blockchain-based platforms as an alternative to traditional product lifecycle management systems (PLMs) is one of the applications. However, before any platform is adopted, its nature, functionalities, and adaptability need to be clearly defined, evaluated, and verified. In this context, the proposed work explores the available blockchain-based platforms that can be used for the purpose of product lifecycle management. We then apply one of the multi-criteria decision-making techniques, i.e., the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), to select the best possible blockchain-based platform for PLM. As transaction speed, data privacy, and scalability are our prime concerns in PLM, we only considered the permissioned (private) blockchain platforms as available alternatives in the final selection process. Results achieved on the basis of considered criteria show that Hyperledger Fabric is the top-ranked among available alternatives to be used for PLM. Furthermore, as blockchain is a new technology, a clear comparison of the available platforms based on the performance-based metrics and key performance indicators is not completely matured and is still in the development stage. However, our proposed approach can be considered an attempt to create a procedure for evaluating blockchain-based platform implementation in any sector.

From Traditional Product Lifecycle Management Systems to Blockchain-Based Platforms

Background: Several product lifecycle management systems (PLMs) have been implemented in the industrial sector for managing the data of the product from the design up to the disposal or recycling stage. However, these PLMs face certain challenges in managing the complex and decentralized product lifecycles. Methods: To this aim, this work investigates the currently implemented PLMs used in industries through the exploration of various software reviews and selection websites. Accordingly, these existing PLMs are quantitatively compared and analyzed. Results: The analysis shows that most of the existing PLMs do not contain all the required features; therefore, industries integrate different software to create a full-fledged PLM system. However, this practice results in reducing the overall system efficiency. In this context, this paper assesses and recommends a blockchain-based innovative solution that overcomes the challenges of existing PLMs, hence increasing the overall system efficiency. Furthermore, this work argues, in a logical way, that the recommended blockchain-based platform provides a secure and connected infrastructure for data handling, processing, and storage at different stages of the product lifecycle. Conclusions: This work can be considered among the first to compare the currently implemented PLMs with a novel blockchain-based method. Thus, the stakeholders can utilize the outputs of this research in their analysis and decision-making processes for implementing the blockchain in their organizations.

Managing virtual factory artifacts in the extended PLM context

Virtual engineering increases the rate of and diversity of models being created; hence requires maintenance in a product lifecycle management (PLM) system. This also induces the need to understand their creation contexts, known as historical or provenance information, to reuse the models in other engineering projects. PLM systems are specifically designed to manage product- and production-related data. However, they are less capable of handling the knowledge about the contexts of the models without an appropriate extension. Therefore, this research proposes an extension to PLM systems by designing a new information model to contain virtual models, their related data and knowledge generated from them through various engineering activities so that they can be effectively used to manage historical information related to all these virtual factory artifacts. Such an information model is designed to support a new Virtual Engineering ontology for capturing and representing virtual models and engineering activities, tightly integrated with an extended provenance model based on the W7 model. In addition, this paper presents how an application prototype, called Manage-Links, has been implemented with these extended PLM concepts and then used in several virtual manufacturing activities in an automotive company.

Пути проектирования надежной отечественной ракетно-космической техники в изменяющихся условиях

The paper focuses on the conditions for developing both reliable and innovative samples of rocket and space equipment, with account for the changing key design-and-engineering factors, including external factors, e.g. availability of modern tools, systems and knowledge bases for digital design, and internal ones, e.g. the ratio between the level of creativity and experience of a design organization. Within the research, we analyzed how the growth of the design organization is affected by modern design automation and product life cycle management systems, when introduced and used, and by the possibility for IT systems to develop, in case when their Western developers stop cooperating. Findings of the research show that the most promising option for maintaining and improving the reliability of domestic rocket and space equipment in modern conditions is a comprehensive solution based on the methods for designing highly critical systems, with account for the specified reliability requirements, e.g. methods of design-technological analysis of reliability, etc.

Application of Big data to configuration management in a PLM context

The emergence of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the early 1990s, particularly the Internet, made it easy to produce data and distribute it to the rest of the world. Today's business information systems contain data that is more massive, complex and heterogeneous. The increase in complexity, globalization and collaborative work mean that an industrial project (product design) requires the participation and collaboration of actors who come from several fields and workplaces. Information retrieval is an essential function for any information system. However, the latter is never easy as it always represents a major bottleneck for all organizations. In the environment of complex, heterogeneous and multi-use data, providing all users with easy and simple access to data becomes more difficult due to lack of technical skills or different user perspectives.
 PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) being a business strategy that aims to create, manage and share all the definition, manufacturing, maintenance and recycling information of an industrial product, throughout its life cycle. life, from preliminary studies to end of life and Big data, the collection of large data sets that are complex and difficult to analyze by traditional data processing methods.
 In this context, this article proposes to establish the main obstacles to the deployment of Big data in PLM systems (the collection of data from the PLM system, the storage and transfer of data in the PLM, the processing of data based on industrialization knowledge and experience, data security and visualization, etc.). The objective is to apply methodologies related to Big data to the management of product configurations (management of product diversity in connection with the development of mass customization (mass customization)).

Literature review and methodological framework for integration of IoT and PLM in manufacturing industry

Since its emergence a few decades ago, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) has mainly shaped product development and production engineering and helped achieve a tremendous quickening in processes and operations. On the other hand, Internet of Things (IoT) is currently in very strong emergence and people's interest in it is increasingly growing. Surprisingly, interaction between IoT and PLM systems are very scarce to this day. Industrialists have enabled a few connections when and where return on investment was high and certain. However, nowadays, the struggle for systems integration remains as the culture difference between PLM’s engineering background and IoT’s computer science background remains. This research work aims to bridge the gap by making explicit all previous research on PLM and IoT through a systematic literature review that explicits IoT’s evolving perimeter over the latest decade. It also tackles literature’s approach between the PLM & IoT information systems and humans. It finally proposes and discusses a framework supporting the integration of PLM and IoT in manufacturing industry.

What Does It Take for Your Organization to Institutionalize Product Lifecycle Management?

Product lifecycle management (PLM) systems have been globally adopted and implemented by a broad variety of large manufacturing firms. Firms still face difficulties in achieving long-term adoption and acceptance—institutionalization—throughout their value chains. This institutionalization is necessary for maintaining product-related data uniformity and standardization. We provide insights into the institutionalization process using various technology adoption models. Based on research evidence, we summarize the situations and factors, where PLM systems institutionalization will occur. Managerial takeaways are emphasized.

Integrated Multilayer Architecture with Multi Interface Entity Model for Risk Management in Modular Product Design

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework where risk management is a living, decision-driving process in a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) supported product development environment. This is especially relevant in the realm of the medical devices industry where products have a direct impact in customer’s health. The challenge is finding a methodology where risk management is a living, concomitant process throughout the lifecycle, which is cumulative, so the risk assessments refine with the product’s definition while adhering to a tightly regulated environment for medical devices. This process needs be fully embedded in the PLM processes so it is able to accompany the product at any change throughout its life. To achieve this goal we narrow the definition of risk to fit our purposes. We introduce the Multi Interfaces Entity Model (MIEM) as method to do a scalable and summative product decomposition. The results of the MIEM will be translated in a multilayered architecture that recognizes the functional, the modular, the generative and the physical view. In the next step, we evaluate the possible solutions to these modules creating a bridge the configurable products in PLM. From the decomposition throughout the design until the configuration, different risk assessment will be performed with the goal to accumulate them at the point of configuration to choose the best product based the lowest possible risk. The results lay the ground for a recursive methodology that supported with a PLM integrated risk management, which can be automated to make sure the risk assessment is complete, re-usable and configurable as an additional PLM function. This allows the creation of a configured design structure, applying recursively the same cumulative properties of the risk assessment. Further investigation is needed on how to implement this framework in an open source environment that is still compatible with proprietary PLM systems.

Semantic enrichment approach for low-level CAD models managed in PLM context: Literature review and research prospect

The proposed approach in the paper is dedicated to enrichment of CAD models storage in PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) systems or archive databases. The paper considers low level CAD models (i.e. frozen geometry and without CAD model tree) based on standards such as STL, IGES and STEP AP203 first edition where the CAD model tree is absent. The paper also highlights the differences in semantic richness between these standards and their degrees of industrial implementation. STEP AP242 standard is considered as a high level representation for CAD files. The paper aims to review the literature that addresses the methods for semantic enrichment of CAD models by using ontologies. The future challenges and one possible research direction are then discussed. A first application called VAQUERO for CAD enrichment using an ontology based on STEP AP242 standard is proposed.