Product Data Management

The creation of new knowledge that comes from Knowledge Mode Conversion (KMC) activities improves New Product Development (NPD) activities. However, there is still limited understanding of “how” a Knowledge Mode Conversion activity varies using collaborative and conversational technologies to improve product development performance. The main contribution of this research is to establish a set of indicators that can be used as guides to help identify effective Knowledge Mode Conversion activities that can be useful for ...

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Product Data Management (PDM) systems and their offspring, Collaborative Product Development and Product Lifecycle Management technologies, aim to bring engineering enterprises together, allowing seamless interoperability between different departments and throughout the extended enterprises. However, there are a number of shortcomings in the current crop of commercially available systems, such as the lack of design knowledge sharing, links with Enterprise Resource Planning systems, knowledge management tools and a generic standard for PDM system implementation. This paper presents a proposed software solution to some of the above problems. In particular, the paper describes methodologies being developed that are aimed at overcoming the lack of analysable product information at the conceptual stage of product design and manufacturing evaluation, along with the integration of such a concept design tool within a distributed environment. A leading PDM system is used to manage all the information and knowledge that is made available to internet/intranet users in a controlled manner. The international standard for exchange of product data model (STEP) is implemented to enable the integration of the design environment with manufacturing and enterprise resource management systems. In addition, the paper also introduces three other recent/ ongoing projects, being carried out at Cranfield University, in the application of PDM, knowledge management and STEP standard for integrated manufacturing businesses.

Computer-aided technologies (CAx) mean the use of computer technology to aid in the design, analysis and manufacture various products. International Journal of Computer-Aided technologies (IJCAx)  is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles which contribute new results in all areas of Computer Aided technologies such as CAD, CAM, CAIM,CAR, CARD, CASE etc. The journal focuses on all technical and practical aspects of Computer Aided technologies. The goal of this journal is to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to focus on advanced CAx tools and establishing new collaborations in these areas. Authors are solicited to contribute to this journal by submitting articles that illustrate research results, projects, surveying works and industrial experiences that describe significant advances in all Computer Aided technologies

This research examined the full range of tasks and activities that design engineers perform, how their working time is distributed among these, and how these issues influence their satisfaction with their work. Seventy-eight design engineers each carried a personal digital assistant (PDA) for twenty working days. Once every hour, they entered data into their PDAs concerning their current work tasks and satisfaction levels, using a work sampling approach. Work tasks were explored from multiple perspectives, yielding highly extensive and detailed results. A key finding was that design engineers' work involves considerable technical engineering work (62.92% of time) and socially collaborative work (40.37% of time). The results were discussed in terms of their implications for academic theory and organizational practice.

We report on a fruitful combination of applying academic experience with formal modelling and verification techniques to an industrial case study. The goal of the case study was to investigate a priori, i.e. before implementation, the effects of adding a lightweight and easy-to-use publish/subscribe (event) notification service to thinkteam r ○ —an asynchronous and dispersed groupware system which was developed by think3. Researchers from the Formal Methods and Tools (FM&T) group of ISTI–CNR—with a longstanding experience in research on the development and application of formal methods, notations, and software tools for the specification, design, and verification of complex computer systems— therefore teamed up with think3—a global provider of integrated product development solutions that provides mechanical design and Product Data Management (PDM) software catering the product management needs of design processes in the manufacturing industry. The technical details of this joint re...

The process of exploitation the database to ensure the correctness of data manipulation, and a tendency to
accomplished associations. The transaction is a fit of logic procedure units; the data modification from one
state to some other state is represented with database transaction state diagram to substantiate uniformity
of data inside the database. The data manipulation ought to separate groups of logic cells, and once it all
finished, data consistency can be maintained, and once a piece of this unit fails, the whole transaction
ought to be absolutely thought-about an error, all succeeding operations from the starting point should all
fall back to the starting state. It has become a necessary to test database transaction states; a replacement
technique of state transition testing is represented and designed test cases in this paper. The database State
diagram direct testing by given the states, events, actions, and transitions that ought to be tested.

The paper presents the trends in the development of methods and systems for manufacturing and assembly process planning on the background of Concurrent Engineering strategies. The solutions for the functional integration of design/manufacturing and production preparation phases and the IT infrastructure including Product Data Management systems for the storage of product structure data, design and manufacturing process documentation are presented. The concept and the example of integrated process and manufacturing system planning in Product Lifecycle Management environment are presented.

Computer-aided technologies (CAx) mean the use of computer technology to aid in the design, analysis and manufacture various products. International Journal of Computer-Aided technologies (IJCAx) is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles which contribute new results in all areas of Computer Aided technologies such as CAD, CAM, CAIM,CAR, CARD, CASE etc. The journal focuses on all technical and practical aspects of Computer Aided technologies. The goal of this journal is to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to focus on advanced CAx tools and establishing new collaborations in these areas. Authors are solicited to contribute to this journal by submitting articles that illustrate research results, projects, surveying works and industrial experiences that describe significant advances in all Computer Aided technologies

Computer-aided technologies (CAx) mean the use of computer technology to aid in the design, analysis and manufacture various products. International Journal of Computer-Aided technologies (IJCAx) is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles which contribute new results in all areas of Computer Aided technologies such as CAD, CAM, CAIM,CAR, CARD, CASE etc. The journal focuses on all technical and practical aspects of Computer Aided technologies. The goal of this journal is to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to focus on advanced CAx tools and establishing new collaborations in these areas. Authors are solicited to contribute to this journal by submitting articles that illustrate research results, projects, surveying works and industrial experiences that describe significant advances in all Computer Aided technologies

Computer-aided technologies (CAx) mean the use of computer technology to aid in the design, analysis and manufacture various products. International Journal of Computer-Aided technologies (IJCAx) is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles which contribute new results in all areas of Computer Aided technologies such as CAD, CAM, CAIM,CAR, CARD, CASE etc. The journal focuses on all technical and practical aspects of Computer Aided technologies. The goal of this journal is to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to focus on advanced CAx tools and establishing new collaborations in these areas. Authors are solicited to contribute to this journal by submitting articles that illustrate research results, projects, surveying works and industrial experiences that describe significant advances in all Computer Aided technologies

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have altered the balance of cost between activities within a firm and activities between firms. Easier co-operation allows companies to focus on their core strengths, while forming relations with other firms to supply the other needed skills to bring a product to market. Design, in one firm or in a consortium, is iterative and does

Concurrent engineering (CE) works best when designers share information early during product development. This information can be incomplete or contradictory. Information sharing is even more important when it crosses company borders to include customers and suppliers in the development of complex products. This applied research focuses on CE with early supplier involvement (ESI). A review of CE and ESI related literature finds a lack of efforts that address the two issues of structuring the process of customersupplier collaboration, and placing the supplier in the customer's engineering process. This paper reports the findings of a case study addressing these issues conducted within two European companies (customer and supplier). This test uncovered difficulties in implementing CE across company borders. It also found that document processing, the most common coordination method, does not capture the engineers' view of their work. Rather, engineers view their work in terms of assigning values to specifications and describing the relationships among specifications. This view is well supported by parameters. The resulting parameter approach is useful in allowing information sharing, data communication, and in controlling data validity. This paper discusses these findings as well as implications relevant to those seeking to incorporate knowledge available from suppliers into the engineering design process.

Because eManufacturing is motivated by the emerging need for distant collaborative design required among R&D centres and manufacturers of global-based enterprises, web-based product data management becomes an essential tool for realising the technology. In this paper, the design of a w eb-based p roduct d ata m anagement (WPDM) system is presented. The developed WPDM is aimed at achieving the goal of eManufacturing by providing an effective tool for product database management through the Internet utilising JAVA and J2EE technologies. In our scenarios, all the involved engineering and management team members who need WPDM are inherently located dispersedly. The ultimate goal is to optimise product cycle time and upgrade a traditional PDM system to face the challenge of the new era of global business competition. Basically, the proposed WPDM is developed in such a way that it allows designers/users to create, view and manipulate product data through the World Wide Web, while founding the architecture of the web application on a three-tier client/server system. The current WPDM of our design mainly uses servlets and JSP to handle user inputs and manage and retrieve product data from the database through the JDBC driver, with the server components stored on a middleware program called Tomcat. Within this environment, all parties involved in product design and manufacture can access the WPDM log-in page with the given URL after a successful identity authorisation. Consequently, these users can create, search and/or manipulate the desired engineering data through the enabled WPDM. The WPDM developed in this work has been experimentally tested in the lab.

Semantic annotation of images is an important research topic on both image understanding and database or web image search. Image annotation is a technique to choosing appropriate labels for images with extracting effective and hidden feature in pictures. In the feature extraction step of proposed method, we present a model, which combined effective features of visual topics (global features over an image) and regional contexts (relationship between the regions in Image and each other regions images) to automatic image annotation.In the annotation step of proposed method, we create a new ontology (base on WordNet ontology) for the semantic relationships between tags in the classification and improving semantic gap exist in the automatic image annotation.Experiments result on the 5k Corel dataset show the proposed method of image annotation in addition to reducing the complexity of the classification, increased accuracy compared to the another methods.

The creation of new knowledge that comes from Knowledge Mode Conversion (KMC) activities improves New Product Development (NPD) activities. However, there is still limited understanding of “how” a Knowledge Mode Conversion activity varies using collaborative and conversational technologies to improve product development performance. The main contribution of this research is to establish a set of indicators that can be used as guides to help identify effective Knowledge Mode Conversion activities that can be useful for ...

Product Data Management (PDM) systems and manufacturing models operate independently does not constitute powerful solution in a distributed and collaborative product development and manufacturing environment. In addition there is also lack of research issues addressing the implementation of conceptual design and process planning stage to utilise PDM system, which offering collaborative development in a World Wide Web. To ensure competitive advantage, comprehensive system integration is needed in order to support and enhance the product development and manufacturing activities. This paper focuses on research concerned with providing this level of support through the use of an in-house manufacturing model and a commercially available PDM system. In particular it focuses on fundamental concept of the overall system integration ideas and methodologies. The manufacturing model and PDM system are based upon, respectively, the CAPABLE Aggregate Process Planning System developed by Design and Manufacturing Group, University of Durham and PTC Windchill.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have altered the balance of cost between activities within a firm and activities between firms. Easier co-operation allows companies to focus on their core strengths, while forming relations with other firms to supply the other needed skills to bring a product to market. Design, in one firm or in a consortium, is iterative and does require change. The ability of companies to better manage engineering changes (ECs) during product development can decrease cost, shorten development time, and produce higher quality products.This paper concerns engineering change management (ECM) when product development involves more than one company. A review of ECM related papers finds a lack of those that address multi-company design efforts. This approach is based upon recent work in collaborative engineering, which uses elementary engineering decisions, captured as parameters, to drive the collaboration. The relationship between parameters determines the involvement of suppliers and engineering partners. This allows design partners to be informed early as to the impact of design changes. We describe the use of this approach in simultaneous ECM, its implementation within a product data management (PDM) system, and initial test results. We term this approach as ’intelligent’ because it is based upon knowledge captured in the design process itself.

In data modeling, product information has most often been handled separately from process information. The integration of product and process models in a unified data model could provide the means by which information could be shared between High Energy Physics (HEP) groups throughout the system lifecycle from design through to production. Recently attempts have been made to integrate these two separate views of systems through identifying common data models. This paper relates description-driven systems to multi-layer architectures through the CRISTAL project and reveals where existing design patterns facilitate the integration of product and process models, where patterns are missing or require enrichment for integration. It reports on the construction of a so-called description-driven system which integrates Product Data Management (PDM) and Workflow Management (WfM) models through a common meta-model. 

Product Data Management (PDM) systems and their offspring, Collaborative Product Development and Product Lifecycle Management technologies, aim to bring engineering enterprises together, allowing seamless interoperability between different departments and throughout the extended enterprises. However, there are a number of shortcomings in the current crop of commercially available systems, such as the lack of design knowledge sharing, links with Enterprise Resource Planning systems, knowledge management tools and a generic standard for PDM system implementation. This paper presents a proposed software solution to some of the above problems. In particular, the paper describes methodologies being developed that are aimed at overcoming the lack of analysable product information at the conceptual stage of product design and manufacturing evaluation, along with the integration of such a concept design tool within a distributed environment. A leading PDM system is used to manage all the information and knowledge that is made available to internet/intranet users in a controlled manner. The international standard for exchange of product data model (STEP) is implemented to enable the integration of the design environment with manufacturing and enterprise resource management systems. In addition, the paper also introduces three other recent/ ongoing projects, being carried out at Cranfield University, in the application of PDM, knowledge management and STEP standard for integrated manufacturing businesses.

International Journal of Information Technology, Control and Automation (IJITCA) is a Quarterly open access peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles which contribute new results in all areas of Information Technology (IT), Control Systems and Automation Engineering. The journal focuses on all technical and practical aspects of IT, Control Systems and Automation with applications in real-world engineering and scientific problems. The goal of this journal is to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to focus on information technology, control engineering, automation, modeling concepts and establishing new collaborations in these areas.

At a time when many companies are embracing business process re-engineering and are under pressure to reduce "time-to-market" the management of product information from creative design through to manufacture has become increasingly important. Traditionally design engineers have employed Product Data Management systems to coordinate and control access to documented versions of product designs. However, these systems provide control only at the collaborative design level and are seldom used beyond design. Workflow management systems, on the other hand, are employed to coordinate and support the more complex and repeatable work processes of the production environment. Most commercial workflow products cannot support the highly dynamic activities found both in the design stages of product development and in rapidly evolving workflow definitions. The integration of Product Data Management with Workflow Management could provide support for product development from initial CAD/CAM collaborative design through to the support and optimisation of production workflow activities. This paper investigates such integration and proposes a philosophy for the support of product data throughout the full development and production lifecycle.

Today products are often complex systems consisting of hardware, software, and accompanied with documents, developed by several groups. This complex system development demands an integrated support on several levels, both for the system and included component levels for all development groups. The need for an integrated support implies integration of tools providing this support. One of the today's key factors for an integrated product information management is the possibility of integrated and uniform use of Product Data Management (PDM) and Software Configuration Management (SCM). These tools provide support for managing infrastructure for products (PDM for hardware products and SCM for software products). These tools are in many aspects similar, but experience has shown that many companies have large problems to use both PDM and SCM in product development. The primary objects of the study in this thesis are the analysis of the main characteristics of PDM and SCM and their key...

Abstract. Increasing product complexity, growing competition, emerging globalization, and stronger customer focus force the majority of enterprises to network their own geographically dispersed sites and to extensively cooperate with customers or suppliers, introducing the need to ...

Abstract. The increasing importance of better customisation of industrial prod-ucts has led to development of configurable products. They allow companies to provide product families with a large number, typically millions of variants. Description and management of a large ...

This paper presents a product dynamic model and design for X solution (DFX) developed in C++ with the OpenCASCADE geometric kernel, allowing the designer not only to get feedback on the viability of his design choices but also to collect data for process and task planning, maintenance and end-of-life strategy planning. The implemented method evaluates automatically both the efficiency factors and the incompatibilities between development characteristics in order to optimize the design of the product for multiple domains. The framework of this DFX solution, based on the product data structure, consists of imposing integration constraints concerning the development process during the entire design product process. In this paper, simple assemblies are used as brief examples to demonstrate the application of the proposed integrated design solution, its effectiveness to improve the design for X and collecting useful data for entire lifecycle duration. The method developed has been formalized with the NIAM model.

Concurrent engineering (CE) works best when designers share information early during product development. This information can be incomplete or contradictory. Information sharing is even more important when it crosses company borders to include customers and suppliers in the development of complex products. This applied research focuses on CE with early supplier involvement (ESI). A review of CE and ESI related literature finds a lack of efforts that address the two issues of structuring the process of customersupplier collaboration, and placing the supplier in the customer's engineering process. This paper reports the findings of a case study addressing these issues conducted within two European companies (customer and supplier). This test uncovered difficulties in implementing CE across company borders. It also found that document processing, the most common coordination method, does not capture the engineers' view of their work. Rather, engineers view their work in terms of assigning values to specifications and describing the relationships among specifications. This view is well supported by parameters. The resulting parameter approach is useful in allowing information sharing, data communication, and in controlling data validity. This paper discusses these findings as well as implications relevant to those seeking to incorporate knowledge available from suppliers into the engineering design process.

Product data management (PDM) systems are well established in the mechanical engineering industry. Here, they form the standard solution for the central storage of all data concerning a product and the processes involved in its fabrication. Especially the consistent management of CAD models including sophisticated versioning techniques and access rights management as well as the integrated workflow management are attractive features for using PDM systems also for civil engineering projects. The paper investigates the technical concepts behind PDM systems and discusses in detail the potentials and obstacles for using them in civil engineering projects.

In industry design engineers have traditionally employed Product Data Management Systems to coordinate and control access to documented versions of product designs. However, these systems provide control only at the collaborative design level and are seldom used beyond design. Workflow management systems, on the other hand, are employed in industry to coordinate and support the more complex and repeatable work processes of the production environment. The integration of Product Data Management with Workflow Management can provide support for product development from initial CAD/CAM collaborative design through to the support and optimisation of production workflow activities. This paper investigates this integration and proposes a data model for the support of product data throughout the full development and production lifecycle and demonstrates its usefulness in the construction of large scale high energy physics detectors at the European Particle Physics laboratory at CERN

Industrial organizations can benefit from the exchange or sharing of digital product data across the
borders of disciplines, organizations and vendor-specific solutions. A number of international standards
have been developed to make this possible. Of these, ISO 10303 (STEP), ISO/PAS 16739 (IAI/IFC) and
ISO 15926 are the most prominent. The first release of STEP was published in 1994, the first release of
IAI/IFC in 1997, and ISO 15926 in 2003. Today, many years after their introduction, it must be concluded
that the industrial uptake of these standards has been poor. It must be concluded further that, with the
current generation of PDT standards, the loss of data or meaning can hardly be avoided. Data exchange
between heterogeneous applications is not really supported. In industrial practice, product data are still
exchanged in native file formats, less ‘intelligent’ electronic standards, or – even worse – via paper media.
The anticipated benefits of PDT standards are not yet reaped by industry. This article discusses the causes
of poor performance and poor industrial uptake, with the aim to encourage the development of new
strategies and technologies.

Many companies consider acquiring a product data management system (PDMS) to reduce the delays and costs caused by inefficient product data management. There are, however, considerable differences between the various commercially available PDMSs, starting from the different ...

Standardisation initiatives (ISO and IEC) try to answer the problem of managing heterogeneous information, scattered within organizations, by formalising the knowledge related to products technical data. While the product is the centred object from which, along its lifecycle, all enterprise systems, either inside a single enterprise or between cooperating networked enterprises, have a specific view, we may consider it as

There is different decision tree based algorithms in data mining tools. These algorithms are used for classification of data objects and used for decision making purpose. This study determines the decision tree based ID3 algorithm and its implementation with student data example.

The purpose of this research is the analysis using meta-analysis of studies in the field of Educational Technology in Turkey and in the field is to demonstrate how to get to that trend. For this purpose, a total of 263 studies were analyzed including 98 theses and 165 articles published between 2010-2018. Purpose sampling method was used when selecting publications. In the research, while selecting articles and theses; Turkey addressed; YOK Tez Tarama Database, Journal of Hacettepe University Faculty of Education, Educational Sciences : Theory & Practice Journal, Education and Science Journal, Elementary Education Online Journal, The Turkish Online Journal of Education and The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology used in journals. Publications have been reviewed under 11 criteria. Index, year of publication, research scope, method, education level, sample, number of samples, data collection methods, analysis techniques, and research tendency, research topics in Educational Technology Research in Turkey has revealed. The data is interpreted based on percentage and frequency and the results are shown using the table.

Product Data Management (PDM) systems and their offspring, Collaborative Product Development and Product Lifecycle Management technologies, aim to bring engineering enterprises together, allowing seamless interoperability between different departments and throughout the extended enterprises. However, there are a number of shortcomings in the current crop of commercially available systems, such as the lack of design knowledge sharing, links with Enterprise Resource Planning systems, knowledge management tools and a generic standard for PDM system implementation. This paper presents a proposed software solution to some of the above problems. In particular, the paper describes methodologies being developed that are aimed at overcoming the lack of analysable product information at the conceptual stage of product design and manufacturing evaluation, along with the integration of such a concept design tool within a distributed environment. A leading PDM system is used to manage all the information and knowledge that is made available to internet/intranet users in a controlled manner. The international standard for exchange of product data model (STEP) is implemented to enable the integration of the design environment with manufacturing and enterprise resource management systems. In addition, the paper also introduces three other recent/ ongoing projects, being carried out at Cranfield University, in the application of PDM, knowledge management and STEP standard for integrated manufacturing businesses.

Several B2B standard frameworks have been developed to support inter-company information exchange. We study how using such frameworks can support design document management in networked inter-company product development processes. We develop a ...

Computer-aided technologies (CAx) mean the use of computer technology to aid in the design, analysis and manufacture various products. International Journal of Computer-Aided technologies (IJCAx)  is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles which contribute new results in all areas of Computer Aided technologies such as CAD, CAM, CAIM,CAR, CARD, CASE etc. The journal focuses on all technical and practical aspects of Computer Aided technologies. The goal of this journal is to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to focus on advanced CAx tools and establishing new collaborations in these areas. Authors are solicited to contribute to this journal by submitting articles that illustrate research results, projects, surveying works and industrial experiences that describe significant advances in all Computer Aided technologies

In a radical changing business environment organisations must be able to adapt themselves, in order to survive. In a Virtual Enterprise (a temporary aggregation of competencies and resources to exploit a business opportunity sharing capabilities, capacities, risk and profit to fulfil specific customer demands), the very high volatility of the relationships and the frequent participation of very small enterprises urges

Computer-aided technologies (CAx) mean the use of computer technology to aid in the design, analysis and manufacture various products. International Journal of Computer-Aided technologies (IJCAx)  is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles which contribute new results in all areas of Computer Aided technologies such as CAD, CAM, CAIM,CAR, CARD, CASE etc. The journal focuses on all technical and practical aspects of Computer Aided technologies. The goal of this journal is to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to focus on advanced CAx tools and establishing new collaborations in these areas. Authors are solicited to contribute to this journal by submitting articles that illustrate research results, projects, surveying works and
industrial experiences that describe significant advances in all Computer Aided technologies

L'efficacia della Realtà Virtuale VR come tecnica di supporto alla progettazione è ormai ampiamente riconosciuta in ambito industriale. In questa prospettiva, la maggior parte dei CAD vendors hanno indirizzato lo sviluppo delle proprie applicazioni CAx verso la definizione di sistemi di Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) integrati con applicativi per la VR. Tuttavia l'efficienza legata all'utilizzo quotidiano della VR nel Processo di Sviluppo Prodotto (PSP) è ancora pesantemente frenata da una scarsa integrazione degli strumenti attualmente impiegati. L'utilizzo degli applicativi VR richiede, infatti, un lungo e laborioso lavoro di preparazione dei modelli che, oltre ad essere convertiti in un formato compatibile, devono essere arricchiti di tutta una serie di informazioni necessarie per l'espletamento di specifici task. Il presente lavoro parte da un'analisi delle diverse applicazioni della VR nel PSP per giungere alla definizione dei requisiti che un sistema informativo per il PLM deve soddisfare per poter supportare efficacemente le analisi in VR. Sulla base di questo studio viene delineata una struttura dei dati di prodotto adatta a soddisfare tali esigenze e viene descritta l'implementazione di due interfacce software per il trasferimento dati fra sistemi CAD e applicazioni VR.

This paper describes an efficient aircraft geometry design tool which is necessary for design and analysis applications through Integrated Product and Process Development (IPPD). The design process decomposes aircraft geometry into several components to represent it precisely and realistically with a reduced number of shape control parameters. For this purpose, several configuration representation algorithms are thoroughly investigated and discussed. The proposed configuration generation algorithm employs the super ellipse equation with polynomial distribution functions, Class function/Shape function Transformation (CST) and can represent and manipulate complex shapes accurately with a small number of control parameters. A model of aircraft geometry, represented in this approach, can be applied to any stage of aircraft design and development with realistic and accurate configuration data. A solution for connecting and storing the represented shapes in a Product Data Management system is also developed and demonstrated. The proposed configuration design tool could be especially efficient when automation, flexibility and rapid changes of geometry are required in a short time and with low computational resources.

Design documents can be exchanged in business-tobusiness networks through Product Data Management (PDM) system integration. This rarely used approach provides new possibilities for faster and more controlled document exchange according to networked product development (PD) needs. PDM system integration requires, however, a common understanding of the exchanged document metadata (e.g. name, type, and version of the document). We analyzed internal data models for design documents in six companies to find their common concepts. On the bases of this analysis and requirements from the PD network perspective, we developed a common data model for design document exchange. This model was then used in a prototype system for PDM system integration. We suggest that e-business standards, such as RosettaNet, could benefit from including this kind of a common data model as a part of their message descriptions. With such an extension these standards could be used for PDM system integration in PD context.

The increasing importance of better customisation of industrial products has led to development of configurable products. They allow companies to provide product families with a large number, typically millions of variants. Description and management of a large product variety within a single data model is challenging and requires a solid conceptual basis. This management differs from the schema evolution of traditional databases and the crucial distinction is the role of schema. For configurable products, the schema changes more frequently and more radically. In this paper, the characteristics that distinguish configurable products from traditional data modelling and management are investigated taking into account both the evolution of the schema and the instances. In this respect, the existing data modelling approaches and product data management systems are inadequate. Therefore, a new conceptual framework for product data management systems of configurable products that allows relatively independent evolution of schema and instances is proposed.