Integrated Product Data Management Based on a Uniform User Interface

Abstract

Today many enterprises are forced to produce products which fulfill individual customer requirements. This situation results in an exploding number of variant parts of a product again resulting in a huge number of product data. To meet these new requirements, many enterprises introduced powerful C/M systems. Normally, this leaded to heterogeneous EDP concepts which are characterized by autonomous C/M components, each with its own database(s) and with a specific user interface. This paper illustrates how integrated rule-based product data management on the one hand significantly reduces the amount of product data that has to be administrated and how integrated product data management on the other hand allows to automate data exchange between several CIM components. The presented approach also includes a powerful and uniform user interface for product data management.