Title: Enhancing traceability in heterogeneous design platforms

Authors: Roland Stolt; Fredrik Elgh

Addresses: Department of Industrial Product Development, Production and Design, School of Engineering, Jonkoping University, Gjuterigatan 5, 551 11 Jonkoping, Sweden ' Department of Industrial Product Development, Production and Design, School of Engineering, Jonkoping University, Gjuterigatan 5, 551 11 Jonkoping, Sweden

Abstract: Companies are frequently using in-house developed scripts, macros and applications to support and automate the development of products and product variants. These items are often of different types creating a design platform with a multitude of dependencies. Such environments are often difficult to overview and maintain. In the current paper, an aerospace company with a design platform that has proven challenging to maintain has been studied. A method and limited software implementation have been tested and evaluated by interviewing four professionals at the company. The implementation provides a high granularity, which has been found to be necessary to give a quick platform overview and to facilitate maintenance and expansion of the design platform.

Keywords: design platform; dependencies; traceability; maintenance; product data management; PDM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPLM.2019.104382

International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management, 2019 Vol.12 No.1, pp.62 - 80

Received: 28 Jan 2019
Accepted: 25 Sep 2019
Published online: 06 Jan 2020 *

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