Information Management for Manufacturing System Development

Abstract: In the development of products the actual product design isnot an isolated occurrence solely providing the definitionalinformation needed to realise information into physicalproducts. There is also a need to develop and design themanufacturing process and manufacturing system that is to beused in the transformation of information into a physicalproduct. Integration of the design processes of products,processes and manufacturing systems has become important toeffectively transform knowledge into physical products. Thisdevelopment process is under a constant pressure to deliverhigher quality information in a shorter time than before. Thedrive for perfection has also forced industry to focus on thisspecific area of expertise and cooperate with partners in orderto have a complete coverage of all aspects in the productdevelopment.The last decade has shown a significant increased use ofcomputer applications within industry for an exact andefficient information creation. The use of computerapplications however, has not been as successful as intended.One major reason for this is due to problems in informationmanagement and communication issues were sharing of informationbetween computer applications has been a major obstacle.The research presented in this thesis focuses on the use ofstandardised information models as a base for an informationsystem supporting integrated design of products, processes andmanufacturing systems. The use of standardised informationmodels is key to communication and sharing of information amongcomputer applications. The development of these informationmodels has until now had a product design focus and theinformation concerned with the design of manufacturing systemshas not yet been addressed.In this thesis the design information of manufacturingsystems have been studied and used for the definition of aninformation model enabling communication of information amongcomputer applications used for manufacturing system design. Thedefinition of the information model has had a holistic approachwhere the integrated information management for design anddevelopment of products, processes and manufacturing systemshave been considered.This thesis has studied the ISO10303, STEP, standard anddefines the use of ISO10303-214 for the design information ofmanufacturing systems. This definition allows for therepresentation of integrated product, process and manufacturingsystem information through the use of one information model.This research has proposed changes to the ISO10303-214 standardin order to represent the integrated information from early todetailed design and had these changes accepted.