Virtual Prototyping and Collaboration in the Clothing Industry

The design and test of Multi-Processor System-on-Chip (MPSoCs) including software is one of the biggest challenges in today's system design. This applies in particular when short time-to-market constraints impose serious limitations on the exploration of the design space. The use of virtual platforms can help in decreasing the development cycles. In this paper, we present a cloud-based environment allowing the design of virtual platforms and prototyping of the system including complex software with prerecorded data or testbenches. Afterwards, the created design can also be synthesized for Xilinx FPGAs. Additionally, this paper presents the use of this remote virtual prototyping environment in a hardware-related programming laboratory with more than 350 participating undergraduate students. This large number of attendees leads to a lot of issues regarding the supervisory relationship as well as providing enough hardware resources in terms of boards. Nevertheless, we want to give the students hands-on experience when programming an embedded system on an FPGA-board. The cloud-based infrastructure allows us to respond to these difficulties by implementing a Software-in-the-Loop simulation based on an instruction set simulator. Doing so the students can design and implement their codes for the targeted architecture and prototype and debug it on a virtual platform. Since the course is mandatory we expect many students with limited experience about hardware-related programming. In this paper we show that especially these students will profit from the additional possibilities which are offered by a remotely available virtual prototyping platform.

As the globalization is at its peak and innovative products are at high demand, firms are forced to work in a collaborative manner. The product data must be lively available to all the collaborated partners. Although on-premise Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems are offering the collaborations and product data management throughout the product's lifecycle, the Internet of Things (IoT) era offers more connectivity at a lesser cost. Though most large manufacturing firms have established the on-premise PLM systems, yet face some difficulties related to maintenance and upgradations of in-house information technology (IT) infrastructure. Hence, cloud PLM is under consideration for adoption among many large manufacturing firms. However, there are several challenges associated with cloud PLM adoption decision. This work intends to find out the challenges which large manufacturing firms face while deciding to adopt cloud PLM. The empirical investigations have been attempted to find out the relations among the challenges faced and to provide the guideline on how to find out the core challenges which needs to be attended before adopting cloud PLM in large manufacturing firms.

In order to have market competitiveness in local and global areas, Domestic Marine Leisure Industry business, which is a latecomer in the Marine Leisure industry, should retain a strong market adaptability by reducing time and cost that are required for work of planning, designing, and preparation for product development. To meet above requirements, it is essential that integrated system control extensive marine leisure industry. After ensuring integrated information by figuring out the systematic link between related-industries, the core of this research is to secure information classifications that are not just in the flow of simple serial order, but in that of integration and object-oriented information classifications. For this end, we examine other similar cases in industries using real information system applied to industrial production and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Product Data Management (PDM), Digital Manufacturing (DM) and applying the same methodology to review practical application in order to construct the information system, and Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), compared with the case studies. Through this basic task for the marine leisure industry classification system configuration (Work Breakdown Structure, WBS) and utilizing information of driving real companies of marine leisure industry, a unique area of MLWBS (Marine Leisure Work Breakdown Structure, MLWBS) is configured. This Marine Leisure Work Breakdown Structure can be used in various areas of applications like products, design information, engineering, production, purchasing, sales, marketing, AS, utilizing various forms of customer support.

Nowadays, most manufacturing industries are in confronted by rapidly changing of market requirements and tremendous pressure of technology developments. As the product development requires shorter lead-time and faster response for the market demand, closed communication and collaboration is required. In traditional way of engineering, each system is commonly operated in isolated environment, and efficient communication with each other is difficult to achieve. This causes waste of investment on the hardware, software, human resources, and also causes inefficiency in the product development and production. PLM(Product Lifecycle Management) and new IT(Information Technology) are the most powerful approaches to solve these problems. PLM is one of innovative manufacturing paradigms which leverage e-business technologies to allow a companypsilas product content to be developed and integrated with all company business process through the extended enterprise. For the successful achievement to PLM, the management, creation, collaboration of all product and manufacturing related information is essential, and the exchange of product information is core part of PLM business process. This paper proposes the methodology and prototype system for product information exchanges and integrated managements in automotive supply network. This approach architected by using ooCBD(object oriented component-based development) which can analyze and refine from the use case model to implementation test. Then, we define a BOM(Bill of Material) neutral file that is XML(eXtensible Mark-up Language) format based on PLM Services standard. PLM Services is an articulate PLM data model schema to exchange product information. Eventually, we implement the software modules to support data exchange between commercial PDM(Product Data Management) systems of diverse suppliers and CAD system. In this research, object CAD/PDM Systems are Teamcenter Engineering, SmarTeam and CATIA. Using this product information exchanges and integrated management in engineering collaboration portal and suggested neutral file for BOM, many engineers in supply network can share their information and knowledge in a fast, integrated and convenient way.

Process-oriented Semantic Knowledge Management in Product Lifecycle Management

The objective of this paper is to discuss future developments and potentials for Product Data Management (PDM) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems, based on a new theory-based approach to modelling products and product development processes ('Property-Driven Development/Design', PDD). A special focus is placed on the management and control of the product development process.

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.

A Product Data Management architecture for integrating hardware and software development

Dynamic Simulation analysis of mechanical system based on the virtual prototyping technology can be used to simulate the actual working condition of machines to be designed. It can shorten the product development cycle by providing convenient amendments to the virtual prototype in accordance with the results of simulation. In this paper, the virtual prototype of the crank-connecting rod mechanism of mud pump was built by using the software Pro/Engineer, then the model was imported into the virtual prototyping software —ADAMS. At the same time, the restrictions and the driving mode were applied to simulate the kinematic process according to the multi-body system dynamics theory. Thus the whole dynamic analysis process of the virtual prototype was completed. Though the process, the movement process graphs such as displacement, velocity and acceleration of the piston were obtained, which validated the availability of the movement model. The design process and methodology adopted in this paper can be a valuable reference for the design and development of similar products.

This article studies the role of product lifecycle management (PLM) in industrial engineering. The basic concepts of PLM—product data management, engineering change management, and product structure management—were also discussed. PLM provides data and management capabilities to reduce the non-value-added tasks required of engineers. It also increases engineering productivity, provides insight into engineering efforts, and improves product quality and customer satisfaction. Companies are receiving significant value and return from their PLM investments. Many companies begin implementing PLM by establishing a single source of product data, or product record. Most PLM solutions offer sophisticated interfaces to many design automation and office applications, which reduce the need to capture, store, and validate product data. Product designs are maintained as assemblies and parts in the PLM system, and that arrangement allows engineers easy searching when they are looking, for example, for legacy components, with software providing a critical control and value portion of the product. With PLM, disparate engineering teams work more collaboratively.

In this paper, we propose a collaborative product development and virtual prototyping framework based on distributed haptic interfaces along with the deformable object modeling. Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) is a promising technique in industrial product development and virtual prototyping for globalized manufacturing enterprises. Network control problems such as network delay have greatly limited CVE’s application. The problem becomes more difficult when high-update-rate haptic interfaces and computation-demanding deformable objects are both integrated into CVEs for intuitive manipulation and enhanced realism. A hybrid network architecture is presented to balance the computational burden of haptic rendering and deformable object simulation. An adaptive artificial time compensation is used to reduce the time discrepancy between the server and the client. Interpolation and extrapolation approaches are used to synchronize graphic and haptic data transmitted over the network. The proposed techniques can be used for collaborative product virtual prototyping, virtual assembly, remote surgical simulation and other collaborative virtual environments where both haptic interfaces and deformable object models are involved.

Virtual prototyping of mold design: geometric mouldability analysis for near-net-shape manufactured parts by feature recognition and geometric reasoning

With a high load capacity compared with other types of piling machines; the piling machine with extruding arms has found wider application in civil engineering construction in recent years. However, due to the complexity of soil mechanic analysis, which is a key component in the development of piling machine products, it turns to be difficult to determine the design constraints. Automatic dynamic analysis of mechanical system, based on the virtual prototyping technology, can be used to simulate the actual working condition of machines to be designed. It shortens the product development cycle by providing convenient amendments to the virtual prototype in accordance with the results of simulation. To begin with, this paper builds the virtual prototype of a new type of piling machine with extruding arms. Thereafter, the load distribution exerted on the extruding arms during the extruding action, and the force curve of the extruding arms are obtained by the theoretical analysis of soil mechanics. Finally, taking the actual working condition into consideration, a kinetic and dynamic simulation analysis of the virtual prototype is made using software ADAMS and a further discussion is presented. The design process and methodology adopted in this paper can be a valuable reference for the design and development of similar products.

Virtual prototyping is introduced and the future development trends of Virtual Prototyping for Flight Control System are summarized. For analyzing redundancy Flight Control Computer Systems (FCCS) of Boeing, Airbus series and BUAA civil aircraft scheme, a VP testing platform for FCCS of civil aircraft is proposed. This platform is based on COTS products, modular components and user interactive interface. It can produce virtual prototypes of dissimilar redundancy FCCSs of Boeing 777, Airbus A340 and BUAA civil aircraft scheme. This platform is open and expandable, supporting concurrent multidisciplinary design.

In order to reduce muzzle disturbance of gun, establish virtual prototype of a type of howitzer based on complex factors such as mass eccentricity of recoil parts, soil stiffness and damping, clearance of elevating mechanism, stiffness and damping of papilionaceous spring. Use velocity and angular velocity to reflect muzzle disturbance, then examine, simulate and analyze the virtual prototype. According to the simulation results, the virtual prototype including clearance and papilionaceous spring of elevating mechanism can reflect actual launch process and dynamics performance. Orthogonal Design Method is introduced to design simulation experimentation so as to obtain the sample couple. The back propagation algorithm is used to study and train the sample couple based on artificial neural network, then the nonlinearity relation was achieved between the design parameter and performance index. Establish the objective function, then the appropriate optimization arithmetic can be used to optimize vital parameters to reduce muzzle disturbance independent of virtual prototyping technology. Moreover, it can provide theoretical guide for optimization of muzzle disturbance.