Integrated Product and Process Management for Engineering Design Applications

SUKITS is a joint project of computer scientists and mechanical engineers which is devoted to the design and implementation of an integrated infrastructure for product development. This infrastructure – the CIM Manager – provides a framework for a posteriori integration of heterogeneous application systems. This paper describes management of engineering products and processes. Product management deals with configurations of interdependent, versioned documents such as designs, manufacturing plans, or NC programs. Management of engineering processes is tightly integrated with product management. A configuration of interdependent documents is interpreted as a net of communicating processes. Concurrent engineering is supported by exchanging pre–releases of intermediate results.