Implementation of model-based definition and product data management for the optimization of industrial collaboration and productivity
Konstantinos Rinos, Nikolaos Kostis, E. Varitis, Vasileios Vekis
Abstract
For many years, it has been the industry’s intention to support its product life-cycle with different data formats and versions of the same model in order to provide the necessary information for all the downstream processes. The creation of Model-Based Definition technology eliminates the necessity of diverse file formats by substituting them with a single file that is capable of carrying all the important information for processes, such as design, manufacturing, etc. Furthermore, to achieve a proper distribution of the data to the departments involved in the development of the product, many approaches exploited the PLM and the model-based workflows emerged from these technologies’ cooperation. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a proposed methodology, which utilizes the capabilities of MBD technology along with the use of PDM software to refine the data sharing process and streamline the collaboration among different departments of a company, without being limited to the design and manufacturing of the product. Aiming to eliminate counterproductive data formats and collaboration methods used in the industry, the proposed method uses an MBD 3D PDF-based template as the main source of the necessary information for all the product life-cycle processes. This lightweight template file, in cooperation with the PDM software, provides the ability to all the departments to obtain the required information, and contribute to the generation of them through a proposed workflow. Moreover, the results concerning the duration of different production activities obtained by the implementation of the method to an industrial equipment company, are used to demonstrate its efficiency.