Chapter 6: Application and Best Practices

Title: Methods for the Capture of Manufacture Best Practice in Product Lifecycle Management

Author(s): AG Gunendran, RIM Young

Address: Loughborough University Wolfson School of Mech. & Manu. Eng., Loughborough University, Loughborough, LE11 3TU, UK | Loughborough University Wolfson School of Mech. & Manu. Eng., Loughborough University, Loughborough, LE11 3TU, UK

Reference: International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management 2008 pp. 416 - 427

Abstract/Summary: The capture of manufacturing best practice knowledge in product lifecycle management systems has significant potential to improve the quality of design decisions and minimise manufacturing problems during new product development. It should both support manufacturing engineers and offer designers an improved ability to understand the manufacturing consequences of alternative design options. However, providing a re-useable source of best practice is difficult due to the complexity of the viewpoint relationships between products and the manufacturing processes and resources used to produce them. This paper reports on an industrial exploration of this problem combined with the application of modelling methods which support the capture of relationship knowledge during system design. The paper discusses the analysis of a number of component products and their manufacturing methods in order to identify how best to organise manufacturing best practice knowledge, the relationships between elements of this knowledge plus their relationship to product information. The representation of such complex relationships during system design typically causes problems as traditional system design tools such as UML do not support the capture of other than simple relationships. This paper also explores the application of UML2 as a system design tool which can model these relationships and hence support the reuse of system design models over time. The paper identifies a set of part family and feature libraries as a means of capturing best practice manufacturing knowledge and illustrates how these can be linked to manufacturing resource models and product information. The viewpoint relationships between part families and features are captured during system design using UML2 thereby supporting the long term re-use of the knowledge as systems are developed and new systems come on line. Design for manufacture and machining best practice views are used to illustrate the concepts developed.

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