A FRAMEWORK FOR PRODUCT DATA

Improved support for engineering using information technology involves the integration of existing, evolving and future product data, and so ftware that processes that data. For this reason, there is increasing interest in the representation of product data in the computer to supp ort computer-aided engineering applications. To avoid duplication and inconsistency, and to support the use of new implementation technology as it emerges, conceptual models of product data are required. Such m odels are independent of the software and hardware environments in whi ch they are implemented. System architectures to support the integrati on of applications at implementation time are becoming an accepted par t of engineering information systems. We contend that, to use these so ftware support environments effectively, integrated product data is re quired. Further, it must be possible to extend the integrated product data in a controlled fashion ii it is to evolve to support future engi neering applications effectively. A framework that is a part of the pr oduct data, at the conceptual modeling (rather than the implementation ) stage, is shown to help to satisfy these requirements. The framework presented here is a structure for the information content of product data rather than for the implementation of such data. Our research has shown that product data based on the framework can be successfully im plemented in a number of different forms, for example, network, relati onal, and object-oriented databases. This paper describes a framework for electromechanical product data that has been implemented in a stru cture editor and is currently being used to support a range of enginee ring applications. We show that the process of product data integratio n can be improved by using existing integration strategies in conjunct ion with a framework that provides an overall organization for the dat a.