VALIDATING COOPERATIVE SYSTEMS SIMULATION AND REMODELING FOR PUMP COVER DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING IN A VIRTUAL ENTERPRISE

In order to integrate the manufacturing systems in virtual environment some changes must be made in manufacturing systems architecture. To support this environment, the basic infrastructure for the enterprise must to consider two main modules: The Internal Module, that represents the autonomous unit of a particular company and includes the manufacturing system, the complete structure of the company information (databases, information system etc.) and all the decision making processes;virtual enterprise, manufacturing systems, remodeling, simulation, cooperative systems

Towards Integrated Document Management in Networked Product Development

Product development (PD) in a network of collaborative companies is different from the traditional way of doing PD within single organization. Parallel way of doing PD increases the need for synchronization of PD activities, but the flow of design information in the company network is difficult to manage. There are indications that the automation of document management should improve the performance of networked PD projects. However, the dynamic nature of networked PD is an obstacle for this, as it requires such flexibility and speed from the setup and further maintenance of integrated document management that is currently unavailable. This article is a work-in-progress publication about research that seeks ways to reduce the setup time of integrated document management for a network of companies that collaborate on PD. This article reviews literature to create the basis for developing solutions to solve this problem, presents our suggestions, and define the following research steps in the road towards integrated document management in networked PD

Open Standard, Open Source and Peer to Peer Methods for Collaborative Product Development and Knowledge Management

Tools such as product data management (PDM) and its offspring product lifecycle management (PLM) enable collaboration within and between enterprises. Large enterprises have invariably been the target of software vendors for development of such tools, resulting in large entralized applications. These are beyond the means of small to medium enterprises (SME). Even after these efforts had been made, large enterprises face numerous difficulties with PLM. Firstly, enterprises evolve, and an evolving enterprise needs an evolving data management system. With large applications, such configuration changes have to be made at the server level by dedicated staff. The second problem arises when enterprises wish to collaborate with a large number of suppliers and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers. Current applications enable collaboration using business-to-business (B2B) protocols. However, these do not take into account that disparate enterprises do not have unitary data models or workflows. This is a strong factor in reducing the abilities of large enterprises to participate in collaborative project

Engineering design knowledge management in de-centralised virtual enterprises

The problems of collaborative engineering design and knowledge management at the conceptual stage in a network of dissimilar enterprises was investigated. This issue in engineering design is a result of the supply chain and virtual enterprise (VE) oriented industry that demands faster time to market and accurate cost/manufacturing analysis from conception. The solution consisted of a de-centralised super-peer net architecture to establish and maintain communications between enterprises in a VE. In the solution outlined below, the enterprises are able to share knowledge in a common format and nomenclature via the building-block shareable super-ontology that can be tailored on a project by project basis, whilst maintaining the common nomenclature of the ‘super-ontology’ eliminating knowledge interpretation issues. The two-tier architecture layout of the solution glues together the peer-peer and super-ontologies to form a coherent system for both internal and virtual enterprise knowledge management and product development

Modelling for data management & exchange in Concurrent Engineering - A case study of civil aircraft assembly line

This research aims to improve the dataflow performance of the Concurrent Engineering (CE) practice in the detail design stage of the aircraft Assembly Line (AL) in the C919 aircraft project. As the final integrator of the aircraft, Shanghai Aircraft Manufacturing Company Ltd. (SAMC) is responsible for developing the AL with global suppliers. Although CE has been implemented in AL projects to shorten lead time, reduce development cost and improve design quality, the lack of experience and insufficient infrastructure may lead to many challenges in cooperation with distributed suppliers, especially regarding data management/exchange and workflow control. In this research, the particular CE environment and activities in SAMC AL projects were investigated. By assessing the CE performance and benchmarking, the improvement opportunities are identified, and then an activity-oriented workflow and dataflow model is established by decomposing the work process to detail levels. Based on this model, a Product Data Management (PDM) based support platform is proposed to facilitate data management/exchange in dynamic workflow to improve work efficiency and interoperability. This solution is mocked-up on the Siemens Teamcenter 8.1 PLM(Product Lifecycle Management) software and its feasibility is checked. The mock-up is evaluated by SAMC experts and suppliers. The feedback shows the acceptance of the model by experts and the urgency of improving data/work flow design before PLM implementing. The result of this research is useful for enterprises in similar environments transiting from pre-PLM to implementing PLM and who wanting to strengthen CE in the new product development

A Framework of Implementation of Collaborative Product Service in Virtual Enterprise

To satisfy new market requirements, manufacturing industry has shifted from mass production that takes advantage of the scale of production, to quality management that optimizes the internal enterprise functions, to e-manufacturing era that leverage intellectual capital via collaborative innovation. In the same time, the product itself is becoming the most important asset for sustainable business success. Consequently, the effectiveness, efficiency and innovation for the development of the product across the whole product lifecycle are becoming key business factors for manufacturing enterprise to obtain competitive advantages for survival. To tackle such challenges, a new business model called collaborative product services in virtual enterprise is proposed in this paper. The architecture of this new model is developed based on the framework and the application of web service and process management for collaboration product service in virtual enterprise. Indeed, it is hoped that this architecture will lay the foundation for further research and development of effective product lifecycle management in virtually collaborative enterprise environment.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA

A methodology for the distributed and collaborative management of engineering knowledge

The problems of collaborative engineering design and management at the conceptual stage in a large network of dissimilar enterprises was investigated. This issue in engineering design is a result of the supply chain and virtual enterprise (VE) oriented industry that demands faster time to market and accurate cost/manufacturing analysis from conception. Current tools and techniques do not completely fulfil this requirement due to a lack of coherent inter-enterprise collaboration and a dearth of manufacturing knowledge available at the concept stage. Client-server and peer to peer systems were tested for communication, as well as various techniques for knowledge management and propagation including Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and expert systems. As a result of system testing, and extensive literature review, several novel techniques were proposed and tested to improve the coherent management of knowledge and enable inter-enterprise collaboration. The techniques were trialled on two engineering project examples. An automotive Tier-1 supplier which designs products whose components are sub­contracted to a large supply chain and assembled for an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) was used as a test scenario. The utility of the systems for integrating large VEs into a coherent project with unified specifications were demonstrated in a simple example, and problems associated with engineering document management overcome via re-usable, configurable, object oriented ontologies propagated throughout the VE imposing a coherent nomenclature and engineering product definition. All knowledge within the system maintains links from specification - concept - design - testing through to manufacturing stages, aiding the participating enterprises in maintaining their knowledge and experience for future projects. This potentially speeds the process of innovation by enabling companies to concentrate on value-added aspects of designs whilst ‘bread-and-butter’ expertise is reused. The second example, a manufacturer of rapid-construction steel bridges, demonstrated the manufacturing dimension of the methodology, where the early stage of design, and the generation of new concepts by reusing existing manufacturing knowledge bases was demonstrated. The solution consisted of a de-centralised super-peer net architecture to establish and maintain communications between enterprises in a VE. The enterprises are able to share knowledge in a common format and nomenclature via the building-block shareable super-ontology that can be tailored on a project by project basis, whilst maintaining the common nomenclature of the ‘super-ontology’ eliminating knowledge interpretation issues. The two-tier architecture developed as part of the solution glues together the peer-peer and super-ontologies to form a coherent system for internal knowledge management and product development as well as external virtual enterprise product development and knowledge management. In conclusion, the methodology developed for collaboration and knowledge management was shown to be more appropriate for use by smaller enterprises collaborating in a large Virtual Enterprise than PLM technology in terms of: usability, configurability, cost of system and individual control over intellectual property rights

Framework for the Integration of Mobile Device Features in PLM

Currently, companies have covered their business processes with stationary workstations while mobile business applications have limited relevance. Companies can cover their overall business processes more time-efficiently and cost-effectively when they integrate mobile users in workflows using mobile device features. The objective is a framework that can be used to model and control business applications for PLM processes using mobile device features to allow a totally new user experience

An extensible manufacturing resource model for process integration

Driven by industrial needs and enabled by process technology and information technology, enterprise integration is rapidly shifting from information integration to process integration to improve overall performance of enterprises. Traditional resource models are established based on the needs of individual applications. They cannot effectively serve process integration which needs resources to be represented in a unified, comprehensive and flexible way to meet the needs of various applications for different business processes. This paper looks into this issue and presents a configurable and extensible resource model which can be rapidly reconfigured and extended to serve for different applications. To achieve generality, the presented resource model is established from macro level and micro level. A semantic representation method is developed to improve the flexibility and extensibility of the model