Information Management for Mechatronic Products. Focusing on Information Modelling Aspects

Licentiatavhandling, 2005

Mechatronic information management in today's product development is a difficult task in companies, as an increasing amount of product functions are realized through a mixture of not only mechanics, but also software and electronics. Together with the diversity of involved engineering domains and product complexity, this places new demands for maintaining overview and consistency in the product representation, thus assuring companies' intellectual assets. This work proceeds from the assumption that Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems constitute the core of an information solution that fulfils present and future information requirements. The research's starting point is widely accepted theory, methodology and industrial information standards. A modelling perspective is assigned to reach the overall aim, which is to outline an integrated approach towards a co-ordinated management of information in support of mechatronics. Questions of similarities and differences in concepts and semantics in the concerned engineering domains are posed and answered. The results signify that an integrated information model for mechatronics is possible to implement. The important matters that must be addressed when applying PLM to mechatronics are shown. Detailed results are provided that are reached from existing phenomena in the respective engineering domains. Moreover, an information model is presented that utilizes the functional abstraction to facilitate a non-domain-specific layer in the product representation. The contribution from this work is aligned to the cross-section of PLM/PDM and mechatronics. A holistic approach towards the implementation prerequisites for an integrated information management is delivered. In particular, this work contributes mappings between relevant phenomena models, thus enabling a continued approach towards information integration. Furthermore, a proposal is delivered that sets the product's transformational behaviour in the centre of a possible application of Product Data Management (PDM) to better an international standard.