Managing the exchange of engineering product data to support through life ship design

Abstract An approach for managing the exchange of engineering product data between geographically distributed designers and analysts using a heterogeneous tool set for the through-life design of a ship is described. The approach was developed within a pan-European maritime project called VRShips-ROPAX 2000 that demonstrated how information technology could be integrated into the design process. This paper describes the development of a common model containing neutral ship product data through a bottom-up consideration of the requirements of the tools to be integrated, as well as a top-down consideration of the data requirements for through life design. This common model was supported within an Integrated Design Environment (IDE) that co-ordinated design activity distributed across Europe. The IDE ensured that the users were provided with the right data in the right form at the right time to do the right task, i.e., that the design activity was timely and appropriate. The strengths and weaknesses of the approach are highlighted.

[1]  Steven J. DeRose,et al.  XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0 , 1999 .

[2]  Doug Kaye,et al.  Loosely Coupled: The Missing Pieces of Web Services , 2003 .

[3]  Steven J. Fenves,et al.  A foundation for interoperability in next-generation product development systems , 2001, Comput. Aided Des..

[4]  Wim Gielingh,et al.  An assessment of the current state of product data technologies , 2008, Comput. Aided Des..

[5]  Alex H. B. Duffy,et al.  Design co-ordination for concurrent engineering , 1993 .

[6]  D. Tony Liu,et al.  A review of web-based product data management systems , 2001 .

[7]  Amy J. C. Trappey,et al.  A step toward STEP-compatible engineering data management: the data models of product structure and engineering changes , 1998 .

[8]  Steven J. Fenves,et al.  Information sharing and exchange in the context of product lifecycle management: Role of standards , 2008, Comput. Aided Des..

[9]  Ben J Hicks,et al.  International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED 13) , 2003 .

[10]  Alex H. B. Duffy,et al.  A system for co-ordinating concurrent engineering , 2001 .

[11]  Alex H. B. Duffy,et al.  Ship Product Modeling , 2003 .

[12]  Chong-Won Lee,et al.  Exchange of outfitting data between tribon and PDMS based on neutral formats , 2009 .

[13]  Jonas Rosén,et al.  FEDERATED THROUGH-LIFE SUPPORT, ENABLING ONLINE INTEGRATION OF SYSTEMS WITHIN THE PLM DOMAIN , 2006 .

[14]  Thomas C Rando.  XML-BASED INTEROPERABILITY IN THE INTEGRATED SHIPBUILDING ENVIRONMENT (ISE) , 2001 .

[15]  H. Nowacki,et al.  NEUTRABAS: A Neutral Product Definition Database for Large Multifunctional Systems , 2001 .

[16]  Venkat N. Gudivada,et al.  Semantic Web services , 2005 .

[17]  Steven J. Fenves,et al.  A Model for the Flow of Design Information in Product Development , 2000, Engineering with Computers.

[18]  Mike Kagioglou,et al.  Towards distributed product data sharing environments — Progress so far and future challenges , 2007 .

[19]  Bradford Smith.  IGES: A Key to CAD/CAM Systems Integration , 1983, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[20]  Steve Vinoski,et al.  CORBA: integrating diverse applications within distributed heterogeneous environments , 1997, IEEE Commun. Mag..

[21]  M. Welsh,et al.  A Data Model for Integration of the Precommissioning Life-Cycle Stages of the Shipbuilding Product , 1992 .

[22]  Horst Nowacki,et al.  Five decades of Computer-Aided Ship Design , 2010, Comput. Aided Des..

[23]  Burton Gischner.  EVOLUTION OF STEP (ESTEP): EXCHANGE OF SHIPBUILDING PRODUCT MODEL DATA , 2001 .