Support for product data from design to production

Traditionallly design engineers have employed product data management (PDM) systems to coordinate and control access to documented versions of product designs. However, these systems provide control only at the collaborative design level and are seldom used beyond the design process. Workflow manage ment systems, on the other hand, are employed to coordinate and support the more complex and repeatable work processes of the production environment, This paper investigates the integration of PDM and workflow management syst ems and proposes a philosophy for the support of product data throughout th e full development and production lifecycle, (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.