About the integration between KBE and PLM

Abstract

This article is focused on the integration between KBE (Knowledge Based Engineering) applications for Design Automation (DA) and companies' data repositories managed by PLM (Product Lifecycle Management), and PDM (Product Data Management) systems. In particular, the authors conducted their research proposing a method to retrieve data or documents of pre-existing components from a document repository, before proceeding to design products. As result of that, designers save time spent in design, verifying loops and documents producing, thanks to the reuse of existing components or product. In order to illustrate their approach, the authors developed an application where the KBE system checks the availability of existing components or products before let the designer proceed to design. New produced documents are stored into the data repository for next design activities. The paper is organized as following: first, it starts with the description of some relevant aspects in engineering design: product and process representation, knowledge reuse and sharing, PDM and KBE functionalities; then, the paper continues analyzing the functionalities of KBE and PDM system in order to introduce the issue of the integration; third, it goes on describing the approach followed by the authors; next, it describes the application above mentioned and performed by the authors on these topics; finally, the results of the work are reported.