Chapter 3: Industrial experiences

Title: Flexible PLM platform implementation for collaborative and simultaneous product development and management in injection moulding|s SMEs sector

Author(s): Alessandro Aurilia

Address: Mechanical Engineering, Universita Politecnica delle Marche – Via Brecce Bianche, 60121, Ancona. Marche, Italy

Reference: International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management 2007 pp. 159 - 166

Abstract/Summary: East Europe enterprises and far east technology supplier's strong competition, forced a lot of Italian SMEs to find innovative product/process solutions to remain in the global market. Developed by five injection moulding's SMEs of Marche industrial district, Co-Mould project primary aim was Collaborative and Simultaneous Product Development platform analysis and creation, focused on product knowledge management and effective sharing. The project led to PLM software platform implementation with a typical "three layers architecture", perfectly tailored to the involved enterprises needs server systems connection "foundation layer" is made up of two secure data storing databases DS SmarTeam – a technical documentation management software – and MS SharePoint, works on these DBs. SharePoint represent both an essential rate of second web service implementation "layer" and of third user connectivity "layer". Moreover a workflow management software, called SP Flow, was installed it links with SmarTeam and with all administrative and managerial enterprise applications. It completely integrate with SharePoint as well, assuring right web visibility to all common clients. In order to complete third "layer" and to allow collaboration and simultaneousness among geographically distributed enterprises, a videoconferencing and desktop sharing system, named One Space.net, was installed. At last, it was expressly developed a quick budget estimation software. The testing process pointed out a time to market cutback in total amount of about 40, so reducing process development of medium complexity product from 120 days to 75 days.

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