Proactive Engineering and PLM: Current Status and Research Challenges

Abstract

This paper discusses about the evolution of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) through the introduction of an emerging vision in engineering design, proactive engineering. Over the last two decades, engineering design has seen some relevant approaches covering sequential engineering and then concurrent engineering (CE). Indeed, this shift was required to encompass knowledge integration issue into product design stages. This has led to relevant approaches such as design for X, parametric design, PLM-based approaches, decision-making support and ontology-based approaches to name a few. Proactive engineering can be considered as an emerging engineering framework which integrates as early as possible lifecycle knowledge and technological constraints in product design and manage those knowledge in an integrated and harmonious manner. The fact of using lifecycle process knowledge as design context demands therefore the definition of downstream processes before defining he product geometry so as to overcome current limitations in CE oriented PLM approaches. Hence, with such stakes, understanding and awareness becomes crucial in PLM in order to deliver well-balanced products.

Current trends on ICT technologies for enterprise information systems

“…The physical IoT entities interactivity is supported by internet-working and web-based programming and is essentially supporting a more proactive engineering approach to be put in place (Demoly, Pels, and Gomes 2013). At the lower level of physical entities, IoTenabled devices, primarily in the form of smart and wireless sensors, auto-identification and tracking devices and actuators are now highly integrated with the physical products and assets in the form of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS).…”

Towards an Approach to Link Knowledge and Prediction in Product Design

“…But qualitative information and knowledge are not yet well exploited due to their relationships complexity. A novel philosophy, also called Proactive engineering, enables the integration of downstream processes in the early design stages before product geometry is defined [11]. Intent can be described as a plan action based on two mechanisms, causality and intentionality [12].…”

“…The Figure 2 introduces a proactive design framework based on causal design [25] [11]. This means that this framework aims at generating predictions of the future so as to activate and reuse the appropriate knowledge of the past into product design stages (present).…”