Development of an Extended Product Lifecycle Management through Service Oriented Architecture.

Organised by: Cranfield UniversityThe aim of this work is to define new business opportunities through the concept of Extended Product Lifecycle Management (ExtPLM), analysing its potential implementation within a Service Oriented Architecture. ExtPLM merges the concepts of Extended Product, Avatar and PLM. It aims at allowing a closer interaction between enterprises and their customers, who are integrated in all phases of the life cycle, creating new technical functionalities and services, improving both the practical (e.g. improving usage, improving safety, allowing predictive maintenance) and the emotional side (e.g. extreme customization) of the product.Mori Seiki – The Machine Tool Company; BAE Systems; S4T – Support Service Solutions: Strategy and Transitio

Construction informatics in Turkey: strategic role of ICT and future research directions

Construction Informatics deals with subjects ranging from strategic management of ICTs to interoperability and information integration in the construction industry. Studies on defining research directions for Construction Informatics have a history over 20 years. The recent studies in the area highlight the priority themes for Construction Informatics research as interoperability, collaboration support, intelligent sites and knowledge sharing. In parallel, today it is widely accepted in the Architecture/Engineering/Construction (AEC) industry that ICT is becoming a strategic asset for any organisation to deliver business improvement and achieve sustainable competitive advantage. However, traditionally the AEC industry has approached investing in ICT with a lack of strategic focus and low level of priority to the business. This paper presents a recent study from Turkey that is focused on two themes. The first theme investigates the strategic role of ICT implementations from an industrial perspective, and explores if organisations within the AEC industry view ICT as a strategic resource for their business practice. The second theme investigates the ‘perspective of academia’ in terms of future research directions of Construction Informatics. The results of the industrial study indicates that ICT is seen as a value-adding resource, but a shift towards the recognition of the importance of ICT in terms of value adding in winning work and achieving strategic competitive advantage is observed. On the other hand, ICT Training is found to be the theme of highest priority from the academia point of view

Construction informatics in Turkey: strategic role of ICT and future research directions

Construction Informatics deals with subjects ranging from strategic management of ICTs to interoperability and information integration in the construction industry. Studies on defining research directions for Construction Informatics have a history over 20 years. The recent studies in the area highlight the priority themes for Construction Informatics research as interoperability, collaboration support, intelligent sites and knowledge sharing. In parallel, today it is widely accepted in the Architecture/Engineering/Construction (AEC) industry that ICT is becoming a strategic asset for any organisation to deliver business improvement and achieve sustainable competitive advantage. However, traditionally the AEC industry has approached investing in ICT with a lack of strategic focus and low level of priority to the business. This paper presents a recent study from Turkey that is focused on two themes. The first theme investigates the strategic role of ICT implementations from an industrial perspective, and explores if organisations within the AEC industry view ICT as a strategic resource for their business practice. The second theme investigates the ‘perspective of academia’ in terms of future research directions of Construction Informatics. The results of the industrial study indicates that ICT is seen as a value-adding resource, but a shift towards the recognition of the importance of ICT in terms of value adding in winning work and achieving strategic competitive advantage is observed. On the other hand, ICT Training is found to be the theme of highest priority from the academia point of view

Integrated product relationships management : a model to enable concurrent product design and assembly sequence planning

The paper describes a novel approach to product relationships management in the context of concurrent engineering and product lifecycle management (PLM). Current industrial practices in product data management and manufacturing process management systems require better efficiency, flexibility, and sensitivity in managing product information at various levels of abstraction throughout its lifecycle. The aim of the proposed work is to manage vital yet complex and inherent product relationship information to enable concurrent product design and assembly sequence planning. Indeed, the definition of the product with its assembly sequence requires the management and the understanding of the numerous product relationships, ensuring consistency between the product and its components. This main objective stresses the relational design paradigm by focusing on product relationships along its lifecycle. This paper gives the detailed description of the background and models which highlight the need for a more efficient PLM approach. The proposed theoretical approach is then described in detail. A separate paper will focus on the implementation of the proposed approach in a PLM-based application, and an in-depth case study to evaluate the implementation of the novel approach will also be given

Product to process lifecycle management in assembly automation systems

Presently, the automotive industry is facing enormous pressure due to global competition and ever changing legislative, economic and customer demands. Product and process development in the automotive manufacturing industry is a challenging task for many reasons. Current product life cycle management (PLM) systems tend to be product-focussed. Though, information about processes and resources are there but mostly linked to the product. Process is an important aspect, especially in assembly automation systems that link products to their manufacturing resources. This paper presents a process-centric approach to improve PLM systems in large-scale manufacturing companies, especially in the powertrain sector of the automotive industry. The idea is to integrate the information related to key engineering chains i.e. products, processes and resources based upon PLM philosophy and shift the trend of product-focussed lifecycle management to process-focussed lifecycle management, the outcome of which is the Product, Process and Resource Lifecycle Management not PLM only

Practitioner requirements for integrated Knowledge-Based Engineering in Product Lifecycle Management.

The effective management of knowledge as capital is considered essential to the success of engineering product/service systems. As Knowledge Management (KM) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) practice gain industrial adoption, the question of functional overlaps between both the approaches becomes evident. This article explores the interoperability between PLM and Knowledge-Based Engineering (KBE) as a strategy for engineering KM. The opinion of key KBE/PLM practitioners are systematically captured and analysed. A set of ranked business functionalities to be fulfiled by the KBE/PLM systems integration is elicited. The article provides insights for the researchers and the practitioners playing both the user and development roles on the future needs for knowledge systems based on PLM

Design Within Complex Environments: Collaborative Engineering in the Aerospace Industry

The design and the industrialization of an aircraft, a major component, or an aerostructure is a complex process. An aircraft like the Airbus A400M is composed of about 700,000 parts (excluding standard parts). The parts are assembled into aerostructures and major components, which are designed and manufactured in several countries all over the world. The introduction of new Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) methodologies, procedures and tools, and the need to reduce time-to-market, led Airbus Military to pursue new working methods to deal with complexity. Collaborative Engineering promotes teamwork to develop product, processes and resources from the conceptual phase to the start of the serial production. This paper introduces the main concepts of Collaborative Engineering as a new methodology, procedures and tools to design and develop an aircraft, as Airbus Military is implementing. To make a Proof of Concept (PoC), a pilot project, CALIPSOneo, was launched to support the functional and industrial design process of a medium size aerostructure. The aim is to implement the industrial Digital Mock-Up (iDMU) concept and its exploitation to create shop fl oor documentation

Problem solving methods as Lessons Learned System instrumentation into a PLM tool

Among the continuous improvement tools of the performance in enterprise, the experience feedback represents undoubtedly an effective lever of progress by offering important prospects for a progression in almost all the industrial sectors. However, several reserves to its use slow down the diffusion of its employment. We are interested in the installation of experience feedback system in a partner enterprise. In this paper, we propose an instrumentation of a Lessons Learned System (LLS) by problem solving methods (PSM) and its integration with a product lifecycle management (PLM). These proposals support an improvement of LLS performance and a facility of his application

Industry-driven innovative system development for the construction industry: The DIVERCITY project

Collaborative working has become possible using the innovative integrated systems in construction as many activities are performed globally with stakeholders situated in various locations. The Integrated VR based information systems can bind the fragmentation and provide communication and collaboration between the distributed stakeholders n various locations. The development of these technologies is vital for the uptake of these systems by the construction industry. This paper starts by emphasising the importance of construction IT research and reviews some future research directions in this area. In particular, the paper explores how virtual prototyping can improve the productivity and effectiveness of construction projects, and presents DIVERCITY, which is th as a case study of the research in virtual prototyping. Besides, the paper explores the requirements engineering of the DIVERCITY project. DIVERCITY has large and evolving requirements, which considered the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, such as clients, architects and contractors. However, practitioners are often unsure of the detail of how virtual environments would support the construction process, and how to overcome some barriers to the introduction of new technologies. This complicates the requirements engineering process