MODULE 3

COLLABORATIVE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

3.1 INTRODUCTION TO COLLABORATIVE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
ALTHOUGH PLM CONCERNS the entire product lifecycle, it only makes sense that there is a
focus on the early stages of the lifecycle to begin developing and implementing PLM techniques
and applications.

This module will focus on how organizations are applying PLM in requirements analysis
and planning, design, and engineering. Since a great deal of the entire product’s cost parameters
are defined during these stages, a focus on these applications can benefit organizations
immediately and give organizations experience at understanding the problematic issues that arise
at the intersection of functional areas.

Definition of Collaborative Product Development

Collaborative Product Development, an initial stage of PLM, is an approach to

capturing, organizing, coordinating, and/or controlling all aspects of product development
information, including functional requirements, geometry, specifications, characteristics, and
manufacturing processes in order to provide a common, shared view as product
requirements are translated into a tangible product and to create a repository of product
information to be used throughout the product lifecycle.

Mapping Requirements to Specifications:

One of the most useful functions that Collaborative Product Development can perform is
developing and mapping the product requirements to its specifications. As noted above, the
product requirements are what drive the geometry, specifications, and characteristics.

Requirements are such things as:

 Transition times between conventional and vertical thrust and back again for a jet fighter
with short take- off and landing (STOL) capabilities must be accomplished consistently in
one to three seconds.
 The pacemaker must mimic the heart’s natural rhythm by adjusting the rhythm according
to a person’s activity level.
 The stopping distance of the automobile going 100 kilometres / hour must not exceed 40
meters on dry pavement.

Once these requirements are translated to specifications and the specifications modified
during the design processes, the linkage between requirements and specifications can be lost. The
focus moves to the specifications and, if the linkages are not maintained, the design engineers lose
their ability to discern which specifications have degrees of freedom and are changeable and
which specifications are unchangeable in order that certain requirements are met.

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 As the product development phase progresses, it is not uncommon to experience “function
creep” Function creep occurs as the product design takes shape. It occurs irrespective of whether
the development is customer or entrepreneur driven. In customer driven creep, the customer
decides that it needs or wants additional functionality as it gains a better understanding of the
product.

Collaborative Product Development, with its focus on mapping requirements to

specifications, is required to prevent the need to reconcile functional trade-offs far into the
development phase where it is much more costly to remedy them.

3.2 PART NUMBERING:

Part numbering would appear to be a simple, innocuous aspect of product development
unrelated to PLM, but it is not. Part numbering is a key issue in abstracting product information in
order to simplify our handling of that information.

By assigning a part number and mapping it to a specific and, hopefully, unique set of
specifications about a product, we are attempting to simplify information processing and
communication across the organization.

By using a part number, we eliminate having to transmit all the product specifications and
characteristics. We also eliminate the need for the recipient to carefully examine those
specifications and characteristics to understand which specific product among the group of
possible products matches up.

This works well when there are a limited number of products, when products are simple,
and when everyone working with the product has exactly the same specifications and
characteristics.

The result is often that a single part number has similar but not exact specifications and
characteristics. This difference, even if seemingly minor, can cause a major waste of time, energy,
and material because this difference requires reconciliation and remediation.

One solution to this problem of a lack of shared understanding of the specifications and
characteristics is to limit the scope of those the shared understanding has to apply to.

As a result, engineering has its own part number, manufacturing has its own part number,
and service develops a new set of part numbers for its use.

The implementation of PLM, smart part numbers are generally replaced by sequential part
numbers. The users of the part number rely on their capability to easily retrieve the mapped
specifications or characteristics and obtain far more information than would be available with
smart part numbers.

In this case, the trade-off is not atoms for bits. But having a small number of bits (part
number) easily translates into having a large number of bits (specifications and characteristics).

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3.3 ENGINEERING VAULTING
 Engineering vaulting is often an initial PLM project because it is so obvious and so
necessary to organizations.
 Simply identifying and consolidating all the engineering specifications and characteristics
in one repository is a tremendous benefit to organizations that lack such a central
repository.
 The rise of CAD systems allowed for the duplication and dissemination of product
information, regardless of whether or not there was a process to control it.
 While this increased the usability and accessibility of this product information, the
discipline of centralizing the information in drawing vaults was substantially eroded.
 Since this CAD math-based data was available somewhere within the organization, and in
many cases in multiple places within the organization, the perceived need to centralize the
drawings degraded.
 However, this proliferation of duplicate and often inconsistent product information created
substantial problems and inefficiencies of its own
 People began to work on different versions of what they thought was the same product
information, only to have to reconcile or redo their work when they discovered the
inconsistency.
 However, it is not enough simply to vault the product information. At the time of its
vaulting, the product information needs to be categorized so that it can be retrieved.
 Some categorization, particularly geometric features, can be built into the design process.
 As CAD application software evolves, some of these geometric features can be determined
and self- categorized by the software.
 Features such as inner diameters and outer diameters are examples of such features. The
software may even recognize and categorize simple parts, such as bolts, screws, and
fasteners.
 In order to create an effective vault, the key to categorization is consistency.
 If organizations can create vaults where they can consistently categorize the part or
product and then consistently retrieve it on demand.
 These organizations can create a valuable asset that they can use to trade off for wasted
time, energy, and material.

3.4 PRODUCT REUSE

 To reuse is to use an item again after it has been used.
 This includes conventional reuse where the item is used again for the same function and
new-life reuse where it is used for a different function.
 In contrast, recycling is the breaking down of the used item into raw materials which are
used to make new items. By taking useful products and exchanging those, without
reprocessing, reuse help save time, money, energy, and resources.
 In broader economic terms, reuse offers quality products to people and organizations with
limited means, while generating jobs and business activity that contribute to the economy.

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  Historically, financial motivation was one of the main drivers of reuse. In the developing
world this driver can lead to very high levels of reuse, however rising wages and
consequent consumer demand for the convenience of disposable products has made the
reuse of low value items such as packaging uneconomic in richer countries, leading to the
demise of many reuse programs.
 Current environmental awareness is gradually changing attitudes and regulations, such as
the new packaging regulations, are gradually beginning to reverse the situation.

Advantages:

 Energy and raw materials savings as replacing many single use products with one reusable
one reduces the number that need to be manufactured.
 Reduced disposal needs and costs.
 Refurbishment can bring sophisticated, sustainable, well-paid jobs to underdeveloped
economies.
 Cost savings for business and consumers as a reusable product is often cheaper than the
many single use products it replaces.

3.5 START AND SMART PARTS

These are closely related to parts reuse is start and smart parts and a PLM mechanism to
create an asset of the organization by capturing the forms and rules used in components of the
organization’s product.

Start Parts:

Start parts are prototypical forms of the building blocks that are used to create new
products. Examples of start parts are Fasteners, gears, and housings.

Start parts are complementary to reusable parts. If the part can be used in its entirety, then
parts reuse is highly efficient. However, if the part cannot be reused in its entirety, but must be
modified, the modifications necessary to take the part back to a form that can be built on for the
new part can be highly time consuming.

As prototypical forms, they have the basic geometric shapes and characteristics that any
part in this class must have. Based on this start part, designers and engineers can then add the
specific form and characteristic changes necessary to meet the functional requirements that are
needed to produce the new design.

Smart Parts:

Smart parts are also complementary to parts reuse. Smart parts are parts that are not only
fully approved and working parts, but they have modification rules built into them.

When the part needs to be scaled for a different use, the intelligence of how it scales is built
in.

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Example:

If a bolt that is designed to support a certain weight needs to be longer, it will also increase
its cross-section in order to maintain the same weight rating.

General Electric has used smart parts on far more complicated parts, such as those that
make up jet engines. Very sophisticated rules about heat exchange, tensile strength, and minimum
and maximum nozzle diameters are embedded in their smart parts. If a modification attempt is
made, the smart part checks its rules to ensure that the new configuration conforms to the design
requirements.

Start and smart parts is traded off for wasted time, energy, and material.

3.6 ENGINEERING CHANGE MANAGEMENT

The change management process in systems engineering is the process of requesting,
determining attainability, planning, implementing, and evaluating of changes to a system.

It has two main goals:

 Supporting the processing of changes – which is mainly discussed here and enabling traceability
of changes, which should be possible through proper execution of the process.

Engineering change management is one of the most vexing issues within most
organizations. While “best” practices would have us freeze the design early in the development
cycle, the reality is that most organizations don’t have the luxury of doing this.

 If the change requirements come from the customers, then they have little or no choice but to
make the changes. However, even if that is not the case, there generally is additional
information gained while the product is being designed that requires changes to be made.

Assumptions about the resulting functionality of a specific design feature are proven to be
flawed or suboptimal.

Therefore, most organizations have to have a change management system in place in order
to implement the changes within their design organization correctly and efficiently.

However, this is not simply an issue for engineering. As engineering changes occur, there
are implications for both purchasing and manufacturing and service as the functionality and
specifications of the product change. As these changes occur later into the release cycle of the
product, the importance to these other functions of understanding the changes that are occurring
increases dramatically.

The issue with a number of organizations, even when they have excellent change
management within engineering, is that the information about these changes is not conveyed to
the other functional areas in a comprehensive or timely fashion.

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 In a number of organizations, this information is batched up and conveyed only at specific
intervals, meaning that valuable time is lost in other functional areas, as purchasing,
manufacturing, or service, to react to or even have visibility of the changes that are occurring.

Figure: Engineering Change

The PLM approach that ties all of these functional areas into a common repository of
information is required in order to process engineering change efficiently and effectively.

Especially for those organizations where changes occur later into the development cycle,
the requirement that they have visibility as quickly as these change requirements are known is of
paramount importance. This is so as not to waste time, energy, or material on working on older
versions that will need to be redone.

3.7 BILL OF MATERIAL

The Term BOM typically refers to a part list for production and so it is not strictly speaking
identical to a product structure. The part list is typically a single-level, flat list of components
required for the manufacture and assembly of a product. In other words, it does not necessarily
include all the components and assemblies of a product structure hierarchy. BOM is often referred
to as a product structure.

A bill of materials is a list of the raw materials, sub-assemblies, intermediate

assemblies, sub- components, parts and the quantities of each needed to manufacture an end
product.

A BOM may be used for communication between manufacturing partners, or confined

to a single manufacturing plant.

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A BOM can define products:

 As they are designed (engineering bill of materials),

 As they are ordered (sales bill of materials),
 As they are built (manufacturing bill of materials),
 As they are maintained (service bill of materials).

The different types of BOMs depend on:

 The business need and use for which they are intended.
 In process industries, the BOM is also known as the formula, recipe, or ingredients list.
 In electronics, the BOM represents the list of components used on the printed wiring board
or printed circuit board. Once the design of the circuit is completed, the BOM list is passed
on to the PCB layout engineer as well as component engineer who will procure the
components required for the design.

Table: An example of a bill of materials

Advantages:

 Help to maintain a centralized and accurate record of information;

 Improve material management through responding to changes in production;
 Control inventory levels;
 Reduce obsolete parts;
 Control and reduce manufacturing costs; and
 Provide what-if capabilities for estimates or customer quotes.

3.8 DIGITAL MOCK-UP

Digital Mock-up or DMU is a concept that allows the description of a product, usually in
3D, for its entire life cycle.

Digital Mock-up is enriched by all the activities that contribute to describing the product.
The product design engineers, the manufacturing engineers, and the support work together to
create and manage the DMU. One of the objectives is to have an important knowledge of the future
or the supported product to replace any physical prototypes with virtual ones, using 3D computer
graphics techniques. As an extension it is also frequently referred to as Digital Prototyping or
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Virtual Prototyping. These two specific definitions refer to the production of a physical prototype,
but they are part of the Digital mock-up concept. Digital mock-up allows engineers to design and
configure complex products and validate their designs without ever needing to build a physical
model.

Benefits:

 Reduce time-to-market by identifying potential issues earlier in the design process.

 Reduce product development costs by minimizing the number of physical prototypes that
need to be built.
 Increase product quality by allowing a greater number of design alternatives to be
investigated before a final one is chosen.

3.9 PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT

Prototype development is a stage in the new product development process. A new product
originates as an idea. The idea is a descriptive statement that can be written or only verbalized.

The idea is refined into a product concept that includes consumer benefits and features of
the product. The concept is developed into a prototype, i.e. aworking model or preliminary version
of the product. After several iterations the prototype is perfected into the final product.

Figure: Prototype Development

Function:

 Experimentation and learning in the product development process

 Testing and proofing product concepts.
 Communicating concepts to the product development team members, management and
customers.
 Synthesis and integration of all components of a product.
 Scheduling the product development process by acting as markers for the end or start of a
particular development phase.

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3.10 DESIGN FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
A topic that garners a great deal of attention from senior management is Design for the
Environment (DfE). While some organizations have been interested in this topic for a while, most,
if not all, organizations have a keen appreciation for the direction that government regulation is
moving in, which will in turn drive their interest in DfE. As we discussed earlier, that direction is
clearly one of making organizations responsible for the disposal of their products.

Design for the Environment (DfE) has two primary objectives:

 The first objective is to deal with disposal and recycling in the design process.

This entails designing products that have as many components that are recyclable as possible.
It includes identifying the recyclable components from other components and also includes
developing the disassembly process and methods of recycling the recyclable components and the
disposal methods for the remaining components, especially toxic or hazardous materials.

 The second objective is to examine the manufacturing process for producing the product
and substitute methods, power sources, chemicals, and solvents that are environmentally
unfriendly with ones that are less so.

The solution that is closely associated with PLM is to create a Bill of Substance (BoS), which
would break each discrete component into its substances.

There are a number of issues that need to be resolved, such as organizations not wishing to
reveal the composition of proprietary products—such as plastics and resins. However, the trend is
toward developing Bills of Substance.

This will extend the decomposition of the Bill of Material up one level, as regulations
regarding the substances of products proliferate.

3.11 VIRTUAL TESTING AND VALIDATION

PLM is developing a whole range of new opportunities for virtual testing using math-based
product information. Organizations can use information about structure and composition to use
computers to simulate conditions under which the product is tested.

Why virtual testing, and what is it?

Virtual testing is a process in which your product is tested on various characteristics,

for instance drop resistance or pressure characteristics.

The process of development has several stages. It starts with an idea and product
knowledge, followed by a succession of steps, such as design (concept generation, test models),
prototyping and pilot production. Eventually, production follows (practice). Ultimately, the goal of
every product is to meet the agreed performance criteria. A football should be able to bounce, a
pump to pump, for a specified time. A production machine should be able to have certain accuracy.
The actual performance becomes apparent, however, only when the product has been (partly)

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completed. What if it does not perform well enough? You start again and repeat the cycle until you
succeed? The risk of a prolonged process of trial and error is real, because you do not always
know exactly "which knobs to turn" to get the desired performance. Lack of time or knowledge
may force you to settle for sub-optimal results! The whole process can become much faster,
cheaper and better by using virtual product testing.

To what can we apply virtual testing?

Motion, deformations, stiffness and strength, friction, impact analysis, dynamic behavior,
accuracy, vibrations / resonance, frequencies, fatigue and life time, crack growth, heating, cooling,
fluid flow, magnetism, seismic effects, manufacturing processes etc.

3.12 MARKETING COLLATERAL

Marketing collateral in marketing and sales is the collection of media used to support the
sales of a product. These sales aids are intended to make the sales effort easier and more effective.
The brand of the company usually presents itself by way of its collateral to enhance its brand.

Figure: Marketing Collaterals

The production of marketing collateral is important in any business' marketing

communication plan.

Marketing collateral differs from advertising in that it is used later in the sales cycle,
usually when a prospective purchaser has been identified and sales staff is making contact with
them.

Common Examples Include:

 Sales brochures and other printed product information (e.g. Z-CARD)

 Visual aids used in sales presentations
 Web content
 Sales scripts
 Demonstration scripts
 Product data sheets
 Product white papers

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