Research And Implementation Of Product Structure And Configuration Technology In PDM System

PDM system means Product Data Management, is a kind of powerful manage-ment software which helps enterprise to manage all the data and procedures related toproducts, and there is an increasing number of enterprises choosing to implement PDMsystem to manage their business and work.The product structure is the underlying core component necessary to the partsprocessing and manufacturing enterprises, which information runs through the wholeproduct life cycle such as the product design, process design, procurement, productionand so on. Therefore, how to manage and configure a good product structure is notonly a core mission of the PSCM(product structure and configuration management) butalso an important part for the function of PDM system.After the study and analysis of the existing PSCM module in the existing productdata management system, the following problems of the existing PSCM are found: thediversity of information integration approach, not fully guarantee of the consistency ofthe information in each stage of the software; the lack of effective product structureand configuration management of the software tending to result in wrong informationduring the numerous operations; the lack of an effective management of the sametype of product structure leading to too much repetitive work in the configurationprocess; the intertwining of the product structure version and material version is easyto cause data errors and difficulties in correcting errors of different products ofdifferent data; unclear defining the primary and secondary work during the mutualpromotion between work flow and product structure cause chaos in structure and theprocess of information.According to requirement of enterprise and the problems mentioned above, thispaper make a demand analysis of PSCM from four aspects: data management, processmanagement, system management, usability management. Then this paper presents adriven model concerning product structure and configuration management. This modelfocuses on configuration of product structure in a quick and effective way, guaranteeing data correctness and consistency and driving work flow of the productstructure. The following is the key functions involved of this model in the applicationof management and product configuration process:(1) Spare parts management. Components are the most basic data structure ofproducts, spare parts management in this paper achieves the classified management ofspare parts through using hierarchical chain code method under the idea of grouptechnology.(2) The product structure tree. The product structure tree is the presentation formof product structure in the system, which adopts the storage means of one-on-oneparent and child nodes to store the hierarchical relation into the database, then presentthe tree structure via the recursion algorithm, and provide maintenance interface forusers.(3) The product configuration rules. Product configuration rules refers to settingscreening conditions during the instantiation process of product structure to selectappropriate parts, which includes the variable rules, effective configuration rules andstate configuration rules.(4) The BOM view. Including the generation of BOM, query and multi-viewdisplay. The multi-view display provides custom view by setting the visibility of thecolumn and column value besides the common views.(5) Data reuse. Including product structure data collection based on folder,product structure inheritance and design of serialized product structure.(6) Drive work flow. Providing functions of work flow configuration andauthorization configuration based on product structure configuration. The completionof configuration enable our users to complete the daily tasks through entering into thesub flow from the process interface. In the process of promoting of the sub flow,association or constraints relations can be set between different sub flows.Finally, this paper realizes this product structure and configuration managementappropriate to the characteristics of driven work flow on the Visual Studio2008development platform and Oracle11g database platform. The key technologies appliedin the implementation process include database interaction technology, structure treeconstruction, rule set, work flow engine, permission assignment etc.. In this paper, itdesigns12front classes, establishes11database tables and involves31database tablestotally. The PSCM realized in this paper has been applied to PDM system in an auto partscompany in some city. It effectively solves the problems of complex products indata inconsistencies, slow configuration for users and the ambiguity of mutualpromotion between work flow and product structure. In one word, this PSCM hasachieved the purpose of designing the component.