Modeling workflow activities for collaborative process planning with product lifecycle management tools

Process planning activities are critical in manufacturing distributed environments where different companies need to collaborate in product development. In this work, we propose a workflow model for a collaborative process planning environment in which original equipment manufacturer and suppliers companies interact with the help of Product Lifecycle Management and CAD/CAM tools. The proposed workflow model establishes the different activities, the information flows and the different stages that must be followed by all the participants. A pilot implementation has been made in order to validate the model in a realistic industrial scenario.