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Life cycle data Engineering data supports the product life cycle. In some cases, for products such as aircraft, the overall product life cycle may be thirty or forty years. During this time, there will be a vast volume of data generated first to design and manufacture the product, and then to support its use. Generally the support cycle is longer than the design and manufacturing cycle, and may produce correspondingly more data. Technical manuals will have to be produced and kept up to date. Spare parts will have to be ordered and manufactured. For each maintenance job, information will need to be available on the handling tools and the required skills. Product specification data may need to be given to second sources. Data supporting repair and replacement will be needed. Field data needs to be managed. Performance data needs to be maintained so as to be able to plan preventive maintenance. A lot of data will be produced during the product life cycle. Many users, perhaps in different companies, will want to access the data. Many different activities will make use of the data. Each will want the data to be available in the most suitable place and format. Different types of data will be produced and needed at different times. New data will be produced, existing data will be reused and perhaps modified. Over a long life cycle, the product may be repaired or upgraded to such an extent that most of the original product will have been replaced. At all times, the configuration documentation must correspond to the state of the product. An aircraft may need to be repaired in any part of the world. Information must be available on its exact configuration at any moment and in any location. Similarly, product configuration data may be required anywhere in the world for naval vessels. If a ship has problems in the Antarctic, it is preferable to know the exact configuration and to be able to fly a spare part out to it, rather than bringing it back to a Northern Hemisphere port to find out which parts are currently on board. At any moment, it may be necessary, for any of a variety of reasons, to look back at the design of a particular part or batch. A batch of biscuits may be inedible. A batch of airbags may be faulty. A part may have failed on a thirty year old airplane. Many companies must keep original drawings of their products going back over many decades. They must be able, for legal reasons, to trace back the components of their products. In the future, companies will have to keep data that is on electronic media for similar periods and similar purposes. In the same way that some traditional media deteriorate, some electronic media will also not be suitable for long-term storage. Access to original electronic data will be complicated by the rapid obsolescence of computers and the introduction of radically different systems. New content-rich CAD/CAM systems will pose a problem. They will have difficulty in using old 2D data produced for old products by old systems. Just as geometric modeling programs used for aircraft design in the mid-1960s have been superseded, today's programs will, in turn, be superseded. Companies will be faced with keeping old data (for old products), enriched data on old products (since without some renovation, the data might not be useful) and data in new formats. An audit trail needs to be kept so that it is possible to go back in time and see how and why a particular part was made. An audit trail is essential to locate and correct design errors. Security needs to be maintained throughout the life cycle. It is not enough to maintain a secure environment during the design phase. Information must also be secure during the support cycle. Just as some designers will not have the right to see some information, some maintenance staff will also have limited access rights. During a long product cycle, major problems can be caused by the departure of key individuals. In some specific areas, they may have unique knowledge, and unless the necessary actions are taken, their departure can have unforeseen effects. This is another activity for which knowledge-based systems will be useful. A complex but logical environment A large volume of engineering information of various types is used by a variety of people from different organizations working at many activities. There is considerable overlap in the use of information between different individuals and organizations. There is also an overlap of activities between people, functions and companies. Products, processes, technologies and philosophies undergo continual change. This is a complex environment. Until now it has been left to run itself. Increasingly, though, for the reasons described above, it is becoming clear that this environment must be managed better. On close examination it becomes clear though, that, even if the environment is complex, it is also logical. The process of data creation and use, release, change revision, and archival is complex but straight-forward. It follows a set of logical steps. As such there is no reason why it should not be successfully automated. If it is not, and the number and complexity of processes and variants continues to increase, manual systems will eventually break down. Similarly the process of distributing and transferring data through the company, and to suppliers, partners and customers is basically straight-forward. It becomes complex when it is not controlled. If it is felt that the environment is impossible to control, then it will be impossible to control. On the other hand, once it is accepted that improvements can be made to the environment, it becomes possible to make improvements. In most companies, the current flow of engineering information and processes is unnecessarily sequential and time-consuming. As a first step to reducing lead times, every activity in the engineering process should be identified and examined both from the point of view of the individual activity, and from the point of view of the other activities in the process. This task should be carried out by a multidisciplinary team. It will be found that many activities can be profitably redefined or even eliminated. To reduce lead times further, systems can be put in place to support overlapping and parallel activities, and partial release. In the same way that product design can sometimes be parameterized by techniques such as Group Technology, once the design process is clearly understood and managed, it too can be parameterized. It will then become possible to design new products much faster. Information on the procedures to be used in an activity can be associated with the activity. Conventional project management tools can be integrated with the management of engineering information and activities. Rather than just managing CAD/CAM data files, EDM/PDM systems can play a prime role in improving engineering performance, significantly reducing lead times and improving product quality. |