2.5 Applications

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Over the years, many different solutions for supporting PLCs have evolved. Many different applications (e.g., CM, document management, change control, and product configurators) have been developed. PDM vendors provide these applications to different degrees. They have taken user functionality and utility functionality and extended the capabilities by developing applications focused on specific problems.

PDM solutions are built upon different applications, together with business methods and processes, business-tailored PDM information structures, and the specific PDM system architecture.

In this section, we present an overview of the most common and important applications used in PDM systems.

2.5.1 CM

CM is a domain that originated in military and space applications in the late 1950s, where complex products were built from detailed specifications. Traditional CM is a coarse-grained document management [12], where configuration identification and control is directly on product level.

CM is a huge domain, related to PDM, with its own definition and standards [12–15]. Parts of CM are implemented in many PDM systems.

CM is both a management discipline and a process. Its purpose is simply to ensure that organizations have the information they need to ensure that their products perform as intended. The CM processes span the PLC, including the supply chain, and must play a comprehensive role in enterprise management. A more thorough description of CM from a Swedish point of view [13] is given in Chapter 3.

CM support, from a PDM point of view [1, 2, 5, 16] provides the tools needed to more effectively communicate with the disparate workgroups and business partners that comprise the supply chain to:

• Instantly communicate and control engineering changes, and determine which changes have been implemented; minimize the number of changes after production begins, reducing delays, and rework; trace problems back to their origins and forward to locate faulty or outofdate components or documents that may have been or will be placed in use; and manage different product variants and versions—changes drive CM;

• Plan and control product configurations (supported by the product structure), especially in supporting mass configure-to-order manufacturing and high levels of customization, using several supply sources; provide different views of the product structures to support multiple disciplines (e.g., design engineer and manufacturing engineer); control the product baselines; manage available options and combinations for ordering; and manage alternatives and substitutes for parts in the structure;

• Synchronize parallel/concurrent or collaborative product development at geographically dispersed sites, reducing lead-time without propagating errors, and provide awareness of product progress;

• Synchronize multisource procurement and multisite manufacturing through centrally controlled and distributed BOM and related specifications to yield a product consistent with a single set of specifications;

• Reconfigure a complex supply chain to respond to rapidly shifting customer requirements;

• Optimize the maintenance of highly varied technical assets and products by ensuring that repair or upgrade crews are provided with the correct parts, tools, and drawings to perform their work;

• Configuration effectivity to meet the needs from different users— designers use revisions; manufacturers use changes to date, lot, serial numbers, or as-maintained details; vendors use a combination of effectivities to determine designs used and as-built/as-maintained details. The configuration effectivity of a part is either a time frame [ t1, t2], a version interval [ revision1, revision2], or a number interval [ number1, number2]. Effectivity is particularly used for manufacturing purposes. The configuration effectivity is an attribute on the relationship, not an attribute on the part objects themselves, as a part may exist in several configurations with different effectivity.

2.5.2 Document management

As document management is important in product development, and therefore in PDM, document management is important in any type of business—software development, information services, publishing businesses, all type of administration, and any kind of production. For this reason, the existence of different types of document management tools outside PDM is expected. The main objectives of document management tools are similar to the goals of PDM (i.e., to provide a structure for the storage, selection, and retrieval of information). According to [17]: “Document management is functionality for managing documents that allows users to store, retrieve, and share them with security and version control.”

Like PDM systems, document management systems use a relational database to store data about documents. This data (i.e., metadata) defines the information structure and different views for presentation and accessing documents. Further, it includes information about authorization, ownership, history, and other data related to documents. Document management systems provide version management similar to PDM. In addition, a workflow management, also designated issue management, is usually provided in document management tools. The histories of documents are available (i.e., it is possible to access previous versions of documents, but only the latest version of a document can be modified). Similar to PDM systems, document management systems support distributed development by managing distributed databases where different replication mechanisms are used for the updating of local databases.

Is the focus on documents specific to document management? Not really. Most of the functions implemented in document management are also present in PDM. Most of the functions implemented in document management are present in PDM. However, there are several functions that are developed to a greater extent in document management:

• Extensive search functions. Document management tools make possible not only the specification of an extensive range of search keys, but also searches through different types of documents.

• Virtual document. A set of documents must often be assembled for a particular purpose. Such a set is not necessarily defined as a part of the document structure; it can be an ad hoc collection of different documents. Document management tools provide support for the assembly of documents, or specific versions of documents, in a so-called virtual document. Avirtual document may later be handled in the same way as any other document.

• Automatic translation into different formats. The same information must very often be presented in different forms. In some cases, certain information in one document is to be used in another. Document management tools provide sets of conversions tools for the most popular document formats.

• Web-oriented approach. Because Web publishing has become of enormous importance in any type of business, document management tools show a strong trend to the support of Web publishing. Functions such as automatic document translation to Web pages, organization of Web servers, Web page organizers, and Web page editors are standard parts of modern document management tools.

• Standard formats. The differences between the formats of documents are hindrances to the seamless integration and exchange of information. Integration tool providers call for a common format for metadata and other types of data. A solution to these problems is separating documents formats from their contents. Several standards are based on this principle. Standard generalized markup language (SGML) or the more popular extensible markup language (XML) differentiate between content and format and in this way enable the presentation of the same contents in different formats. XML is less general than SGML (actually it is a specific implementation of SGML), but much simpler. XML has become a de-facto standard for describing different formats and for describing protocols for exchanging information. Document management tools use XML today as a basic standard for specification of structures and document formats.

In the same way as PDM, the scope of document management tools is being extended. In addition to documents, they manage all types of information items, referring to them as digital assets. Multimedia assets are typical examples of digital assets that require specific treatment. To indicate that the tools manage any type of digital asset, there is a trend to replace the term document management with content and document management.

2.5.3 Product configurators

Product configurators are used to assemble a product, offering choices between alternative components. The configurator contains a set of rules for selecting the correct component.

Configurators are used to guide users with insufficient in-depth knowledge to otherwise configure a product. For examples, salesmen can use a configurator to automatically configure a product based on a customer’s requirements, and a configurator can be used in manufacturing to select the correct components to build a specific product.

Throughout the various stages of a product’s life cycle, use is made of rules based on experience, best practices, company standards, and knowledge of how the product can be sold, manufactured, packaged, maintained, and disposed. Historically, these rules have been available in different kinds of paper documents, and even as generally accepted unwritten rules. The product configurator manages the various constraints and dependencies using the product structures and relationships.

2.5.4 Collaboration

PDM has traditionally been associated with design and release in preparation for production, while the PDM of today aims to manage product data throughout the complete PLC, from the early phases until manufacturing and maintenance. Many users with different roles need the information managed by the system. Within many of today’s companies, organizations, or functions are outsourced. Companies focus on their supply chains, extended enterprises, strategic partnerships, and virtual teams [18]. All of these functions need access to certain defined product information. For example, a supplier will provide the company with new information about an old component. A company partner must know the most recent requirement of a product; a manufacturer needs the latest documents for manufacturing the product; developers must exchange information, often on a daily base during the development phase; and a customer may be interested in how far the product has come in the development phase. This calls for collaborative tools to bridge geographical distances and enable users to work in virtual teams, and it has made collaboration support an essential component of a PDM system. Commercial PDM systems of today support what they call collaborative product management (CPM) or collaborative product commerce (CPC).

PDM systems contain functions that can be used in a distributed environment to provide necessary information to the different roles concerned at the right time. Examples of different roles are suppliers, partners, manufacturers, developers, and customers. Examples of processes supported by collaborative tools are, according to [18]:

• Change management and design review. Information has to be sent several times between the sites, when the design of a product that was developed at several sites is reviewed. If the information is stored at a single location and the process is controlled by a workflow, less information is sent between the sites and control is gained over the process. The next step is to add synchronous collaboration and enable virtual team members to work together simultaneously. A group of designers, working at separate locations, can view the same model, annotate it, and communicate with each other using text messages, audio, and even video communication.

• Sales and bidding. To make it easier for customers, the customers can be given access to product information. The request for quotation (RFQ) process can be automated. The customer sends in a request, its validity is checked, and an answer is generated. If the request results in an order, this can be followed on its way through design and manufacturing.

• Maintenance and support. Engineers, operators, and maintenance staff need access to up-to-date maintenance information. Animated illustrations can be used to assist in understanding documentation. Feedback is also important; personnel in the field can send in fault reports and recommendations.

• Manufacturing planning. Manufacturing personnel can use collaboration for many purposes, such as reviewing design and change orders in consultation with the design team. They can interface early with tool designers to verify tooling assemblies and operations, reviewing manufacturing process plans and factory layouts, discussing manufacturing problems with suppliers, and coordinating tooling at different sites.

2.5.5 Project management

Modern project management began in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the magnitude of new projects, their scope, duration, and the resources required began to demand more than a flow chart and a conference table. At the same time, literature on the subject of management by projects began to emerge [19]. The phrase project management crept into the vernacular, although it was mostly limited to the engineering and designing industries.

According to [19], project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to a broad range of activities in order to meet the requirements of the particular project.

The project team manages the work of the project, and the work typically involves:

• Planning, or deciding what is to be done;

• Organizing the resources through the activities;

• Directing the activities towards the project goals;

• Controlling the activities concerning project constraints where the most critical constraints are time, cost, and performance;

• Motivating the project members to accomplish the project objectives.

In product development processes, the work is often divided into phases, where each phase is related to some kind of decision making. When starting up a new project, the project manager breaks down the project into subprojects. Each subproject manager then breaks down the subproject into smaller tasks and activities. Tasks are ordered within work breakdown structures (WBSs), which can be grouped into hierarchical structures of dependencies. This provides a convenient way to allocate resources and to track the project’s progress. For example, requirement specifications, verification plans, drawings, and software executables can be linked to a WBS to make tracking possible when work has been completed against project plan activities.

Most PDM systems manage product data and processes, which by integration with third-party project management systems can be tied to project activities and milestones. The advantage of incorporating project management capabilities within a PDM system stems from the knowledge that the PDM system has of the processes and data needed to complete specific activities within the project plan.

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