Design change synchronization in a distributed environment for integrated product and process design

Abstract

This paper deals with the synchronization of application views of product data under design changes. This involves two main aspects, (i) a mechanism for propagating design changes to all the applications and (ii) algorithms for dealing with design changes. The use of a common manufacturing application middleware service, known as the Application Relationship Manager (ARM), is proposed as a mechanism to propagate design changes. Dealing with design changes is a domain-specific task that depends on the formulation of the domain process. How design changes can be dealt with is explored using fixture design as a domain example. The fixture design process is formulated using two different approaches, as a sequential design process and as an evolutionary search process.