Product Data Management in Undergraduate Education

The objective of this chapter is to provide an introduction to Product Data Management (PDM) systems in the PLM environment. The chapter will help readers working in PLM Initiatives understand the importance of PDM systems and participate in activities related to PDM systems. The chapter also aims to give students who are studying PLM a basic understanding of the components of PDM systems.

Product development process analysis and improvement are very important to enterprises, but most Product Data Management (PDM) systems are not good at them. This paper presents a method that integrates Design Structure Matrix (DSM), Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Expert System (ES) techniques to intelligently analyze and improve the product development process managed by PDM systems. Based on DSM representation, GA orders the sequence of activities in process with ES's guiding to get a reasonable and optimal sequence. Based on theoretical research results, the Computer-Aided Process Improvement (CAPI) system was developed and was integrated to PDM.

Automobile, aerospace, and other industrial manufacturers have evolved over the years to use a multitude of computer-aided design (CAD) and product data management (PDM) systems and have long depended on single-vendor solutions to support their enterprise-wide engineering activities. Increased product complexity, distributed authoring environments, and the need for tighter team integration with partners and suppliers have created challenges and new opportunities for information technology (IT) vendors to be able to integrate systems from multiple independent software vendors (ISVs) to form a coherent Enterprise PDM system. This paper will describe, in detail, a case study and solution of an IBM Research project called Hedwig. Hedwig investigates creating robust solutions for Product Life-Cycle Management (PLM). We focus on several research issues, including information federation, data mapping, synchronization, and web services connections. We describe a working system that allows access to several heterogeneous PDM systems that are used in the automotive and aerospace industries.

This article discusses that many companies are installing a companywide product data management (PDM) system, also known as an engineering data management system. These systems do several things, besides acting as a central data repository. Much of the data that overwhelms companies comes from engineers using a variety of software applications, such as computer-aided design, manufacturing, or engineering programs. The PDM systems manage engineering data that may come from a myriad of sources and applications but pertain to the development of one product. The chosen PDM system would have to track the design and manufacture of each part that would be assembled to form the finished printer. It would have to tell users what stage in the process each part had reached. But it would also have to serve as a virtual warehouse for all digital versions of a part and product, including older versions that could not be lost because they might be needed for reference at any time.

From the view of task modeling of project process in product data management (PDM) system, a user-task allocation model is put forward based-on product breakdown structure for distributed collaborative product design. The constraints model of function mapping was established between product structure and task breakdown structure. The colored Petri net was introduced into PDM system as the modeling tool to realize product structure model-driven project task management mode and to execute dynamic visible design task scheduling. It is explored to apply multi-agent system to carry out intelligent task management and dispatching. The agent communication and task dispatching framework were implemented.

Before the implementation of product data management (PDM) system, person model and enterprise process model (EPM) must be firstly established. For the convenience of project management, all the related users must be allocated to the “Person-User-Role-Group“ net. Based on the person model and the direction of information flow, the EPM is established subsequently. The EPM consists of several release levels, in which the access controls are defined. The EPM procedure shows the blueprint of the workflow process structure. The establishment of person model and EPM in an enterprise has been instanced at the end of this paper.

There is nothing permanent except change. The only constant is change. Many engineering changes must be communicated to a broad range of stakeholders. The process is often labor intensive, paper laden, and error prone. Product data management (PDM) system and configuration management theory are the most popular system and theory for handling engineering changes today. In practice, when utilizing a product data management system, a planned effectivity must be filled in each engineering change request (ECR) during analyzing and evaluating phase of an engineering change. A change effectivity decision may be required to identify all of the required actions, the responsibility, and the timing from detail design phase to production phase in the life cycle of the product. This paper presents a specific product configuration, which is called engineering change decision bill of materials (ECD-BOM). The procedure for generating such a product configuration from product data management system is also provided. Import states of such product configuration into an advanced planning and scheduling (APS) system, planned effectivity of approved changed configuration items are then computed.

Product Data Management (PDM) systems and their offspring, Collaborative Product Development and Product Lifecycle Management technologies, aim to bring engineering enterprises together, allowing seamless interoperability between different departments and throughout the extended enterprises. However, there are a number of shortcomings in the current crop of commercially available systems, such as the lack of design knowledge sharing, links with Enterprise Resource Planning systems, knowledge management tools and a generic standard for PDM system implementation. This paper presents a proposed software solution to some of the above problems. In particular, the paper describes methodologies being developed that are aimed at overcoming the lack of analysable product information at the conceptual stage of product design and manufacturing evaluation, along with the integration of such a concept design tool within a distributed environment. A leading PDM system is used to manage all the information and knowledge that is made available to internet/intranet users in a controlled manner. The international standard for exchange of product data model (STEP) is implemented to enable the integration of the design environment with manufacturing and enterprise resource management systems. In addition, the paper also introduces three other recent/ongoing projects, being carried out at Cranfield University, in the application of PDM, knowledge management and STEP standard for integrated manufacturing businesses.

A novel approach in organizing product data and managing product information in collaborative product design and development environments is presented. Domains of product data and information are first discussed in the context of generic models of product development process and product design process. An approach called the Product Information Management System (PRIMAS) for organizing and managing product information is subsequently described. In the system, product data is organized in a genome-like relational database (PRIMAS-DB), comprising a matrix of two categories of factors, namely, the Information Fields and the Product Constituents. The Information Fields consist of four generic domains for organizing information for the various activities represented as Product Constituents. The operational model and architecture of PRIMAS are presented. Development of a prototype for PRIMAS and plan for further work are described.

Product Data Management (PDM) system as primary component of the PLM concept has the goal of supporting product development by appropriate methods. Interactive visualization methods support various user groups (e.g. designers, project leaders, managers) in the interpretation and analysis of large and complex data structures in PDM systems which lead to improved decision making. This paper presents a novel approach for the application of visualization methods in PDM systems and a generic architecture for efficient data interpretation.

To carry out the share of product data between different PDM (product data management) systems, this paper provides a domain ontology model of PDM system which is based on ontology and constructed by Protege3.1. This model consults the framework of PDM system in STEP PDM schema, uses the UML class figure to describe the relationship between the system classes. Finally by data mining the mass data of PDM, ontology libraries can be fully exploited and used, information and knowledge can be acquired for analyze and decision-making of enterprise

Product data management (PDM) systems help to keep track of the masses of information needed to design, manufacture or build products and then to maintain them. They can be applied to a wide range of products and industries and across the whole spectrum of organizational functions. Benefits extend far beyond engineering design to include cost savings in manufacturing, reduced time to market and increased product quality. Defines and describes the type of features and functions that should be found in a PDM system and addresses the following: data vault and document management; workflow and process management; product structure management; classification; project management; communication and notification; data transport and translation; image services; system administration; and PDM environments.

In order to solve the consistency and integration about process and process data that is produced in digital product collaborative development, digital collaborative design process model is presented, by detailed analyzing the integration requirement of collaborative design process and data. Based on this model, the CAX/DFX tools which are used in collaborative design are distributed and granule encapsulated by Federal Intelligent Product EnviRonment(FIPER); collaborative design process data produced by CAX/DFX tools is encapsulated based on the logic of Product Data Management (PDM) system’s workflow and is published as Webservice. FIPER is used to realize the collaborative design process flow that uses data Webservice to data exchange between PDM and uses encapsulated CAX/DFX tools to realize the design function. An example which realizes the integration of process design flow of a part is presented at the end of this paper. The collaborative design process flow is used to organize the collaborative process planning and to encapsulate the collaborative design data with Webservice in this example. The realization of this example manifested that the digital collaborative design product model has good practicability and the method of encapsulation for CAX/DFX tools and data Webservice is feasibility.

Production engineers frequently use back allocation to estimate actual production volumes from wells based on frequent well test data or theoretical calculations using well and reservoir characteristics. PETRONAS executed a centralized production data management system from early days of production to establish a scalable and reliable workprocess among the organization. The production and operation data management system of the field supports data collection, QC, validation and production back allocation as well as production downtime optimization. The new system provides a means to visualize complex networks, verify the production streams, track gathering systems functionality through time and derive the allocation networks. The various downtime coding and quantifications, helped Petronas to quantify the root cause of production shortfalls and optimized the unwanted shut downs. The new system has improved the data quality and reliability and has made the data transparently available to the various stakeholders in the organization. After the new back allocation system became fully operational, Petronas started to realize the following benefits from this successful implementation. Determine the production quantities of each well and reservoir for production accounting.Quality check and approval for the test data before being used for further calculationsAbility to allocate production, where accurate measurements are not possible or cost effective.Ability to determine fluid flow quantities through every strategic point in the network The current paper describes the challenges and benefits of the subjected system implementation.

An integrated development methodology of UG/NX and product data management (PDM) system is carried out based on the UG/NX secondary development technology, aiming at the needs of the PDM system to manage the product design information exported by CAD software tools and multi-user collaborative operation in the product design link, in order to unify the information and file format in the system and simplify user operation. The integrated system based on the Client/Server (C/S) architecture is designed and implemented to manage various product design documents and information. The basic model, software architecture, function flow and realization method of the integrated system are established and analyzed, and some key interfaces of the integrated system are completed. In addition, the architecture and functions of the integrated system are analyzed and evaluated, and the future development work is presented. This development methodology has certain reference application value in the CAD software secondary development, integrated system architecture establishment, functional flow construction as well as related system implementation.KeywordsUG/NX secondary developmentPDM system integrationC/S architecture system