PLM forensics: understanding the design evolution and intent by following the trail of change

摘要

PLM systems tend to focus on the management of the latest version of the engineering design, offering very little insight into how the design evolved over time. This kind of knowledge is crucial to enable reuse of existing data and to avoid rework. Understanding the history of change is required all across the value stream. A manufacturing engineer needs to understand which portions of the manufacturing plan require change. Finance needs to forecast the cost of the new design. Certifying a new variant of a product requires detailed description of what changed since the last certified one. This paper will show a methodology for finding the previous evolutions of the data and storing them in a logical structure to avoid the need to redo the investigation in the future. The paper will also show how that history can be better communicated to the user.