MODEL FOR MANAGING VARIATIONS IN A PRODUCT STRUCTURE FOR A PRODUCT

摘要

A product management system comprises a model and a data manager. Themodel includes design data for a product structure for a product. The modelcomprises a primary hierarchical organization of master objects, a number ofsecondary hierarchical organizations of version objects, and a change contextorganization for each of the master objects. The master objects includeelementobjects and occurrence objects. A secondary hierarchical organization includeselement version objects and occurrence version objects. The change contextorganization includes a group of variant objects and a group of branchinstanceobjects. A branch instance object in the group of branch instance objectstracks asequence of version objects for a corresponding design branch. The datamanagermanages changes to the design data for the product structure within eachdesignbranch independently of other design branches using the model, enablingmanufacturing of the product with increased efficiency using the model.