Development of a Service Platform for Sensitization of Manufacturing-Related Activities to Use 3D CAD Data

摘要

Most of manufacturing enterprises design their products through the 3D CAD system. Generated 3D CAD data are mainly used in design and manufacturing stage for product engineering. Since the 3D CAD data includes not only shape models but also part structures and specifications, it is possible to reuse the data in various kinds of manufacturing-related activities after design and manufacturing. For example, 3D CAD data could be used to produce a catalog for marketing and promotion of products by replacing product images, a manual provided to the customers by implementing the animation for the operation of the product and educational materials for training of service staffs by guiding maintenance instructions interactively. These activities for customer support are necessary and significant from the perspective of product lifecycle although they may be not directly related to productivity and quality of products. However, a lot of manufacturing enterprises, especially SMEs (small and medium-sized Enterprises) have difficulty in to carry out these activities due to problems of cost and labor. In this context, this study proposes a new service model to support the manufacturing-related activities to be able to use 3D CAD data. The service model could operate through a software system as follows: A service provider (e.g. IT service vendor) makes core functions to process and manipulate 3D model a form of service platform and develops applications based on the service platform according to the supporting activities so that more applications could be added and expanded effectively. A service consumer (e.g. manufacturing enterprise) requests a service with required data such as 3D CAD data and service contents data to the provider and receives deliverables corresponding to the service. To implement the service model, this study specifies stakeholders, workflow and data of the service model, and develops the service platform. And this study illustrates an industrial case of the service model by developing a 3D digital catalog application and demonstrating a home appliance example.