Abstract
A modular design strategy both enables, but also demands, parallelism in design activities and
collaboration between a diversity of disciplines in companies, which often involves supporting
computer-based tools for enhancing interaction, design management, and communication. Product data
management (PDM) and product lifecycle management (PLM) systems offer support by automating and
managing some of the operational complexity of modular design activities. PLM system tools are used for
handling a variety of product definitions, to manage workflow of development activities, and to measure
relational properties such as cost and performance. Companies often use a PLM tool for management of
CAD files, documents, and drawings, but they do not take advantage of the full potential of the PLM
system to support the development activities of modular product designs. The key result of this paper is
the description of an empirical tested approach using a visual product architecture representation in
combination with a PLM system to support the development of a product family of products. The results
from the study encompass new PLM capabilities for handling multiple product structures, visualising
multiple architectural views on products, controlling interfaces, and quantifying and communicating the
status and progress of product-related resources.
© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Computers in Industry |
Volume | 67 |
Pages (from-to) | 97–111 |
Number of pages | 15 |
ISSN | 0166-3615 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2015 |
Keywords
- Product lifecycle management (PLM)
- Architecture based development
- Product models
- Modularisation
- Interface management