Special Sessions

A few special sessions are being organized for PLM12. Authors can indicate their intention to direct their paper toward a specific special session when submitting their abstract or paper.

Special Session S1: Increasing awareness and understanding of information and knowledge flows in PLM

The growing evolution of models, methodologies, systems and tools over the entire product lifecycle has highlighted limits and difficulties – such as the awareness and understanding in engineering – that did not exist before. The 2D drawings of the product and face-to-face discussions between lifecycle actors have been revised for new way of working with people, tools, and managing/representing information and knowledge. In such a context, some approaches such as concurrent engineering, Design for X, 3D parametric design, ontology-based approaches, decision-making support, knowledge-based approaches, integrated data management have appeared to build the today’s PLM strategy with a particular automation level, but an understanding layer is still missing. From a system and tool point of view, the traditional segmentation of the digital chain – which includes CAD, CAE, PDM, ERP to name a few – has highlighted needs in hub, bridge, dashboard applications in order to enable the continuity and relationship of product lifecycle phases, but still limited to point-to-point interface.

An emergent challenge remains in increasing awareness and understanding of actors in the management of product information and knowledge. Indeed, due to the information overload (e.g. 3D large assembly model, multi-instances and parameters, etc.) this new way of working do not enable the full understanding of the lifecycle information and knowledge which is important in order to improve actors awareness and therefore quality in product lifecycle phases. This requires effort in new inspired approaches in the qualitative representation and reasoning of the product and processes, in ontological applications, knowledge-based approaches, models, etc. The main objective of this session is to propose original contribution for improving the visibility of lifecycle constraints and knowledge, promoting harmony in their management, and understanding the PLM rationale through appropriate knowledge representation, transformation and reasoning.

Session Organizers: Dr. Frédéric Demoly, UTBM, France (frederic.demoly@utbm.fr) and Dr. Dimitris Kiritsis, EPFL, Switzerland (dimitris.kiritsis@epfl.ch)

Special Session S2: From PLM to LCE

PLM is an approach to manage all product information from the beginning to the end of life – and all of the stages in between. PLM-related software systems including CAx and PxM (PDM, PLM) systems have continued to evolve since their appearance more than a decade ago.  These systems impact the generation, exchange, and management of 2D and 3D models globally across product design, engineering analysis, assembly, and manufacturing. But, PLM is only about life-cycle information management: it is not about the life cycle engineering.

Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) is a relatively new idea.  Its goal is to assess the life-cycle sustainability, environmental and economic impacts of all product-related decision given system and technical boundary conditions. The assessment is based on performance metrics for material use, energy use, and waste from cradle to cradle. LCE is an iterative process for continuous evaluation of those metrics for the resources, processes, systems and the facilities involved in the product’s life cycle. Today, those evaluations are done using a variety of commercially life-cycle assessment (LCA) tools.

Now is the time to investigate the similarities, differences, and relationships between PLM and LCE.  To do that, we have created this session is to bring together all of the relevant stakeholders.  They include manufacturing engineers, software solution providers, life cycle engineers, product designers, and information standards developers. We invite them to identify and discuss the research needs that will enable the capabilities to:

  1. Integrate current PLM tools with LCA tools effectively to  maximize industry impact
  2. Integrate current PLM tools with asset management tools to provide comprehensive life-cycle and maintenance planning for all manufacturing assets
  3. Model and track materials, energy, water, and waste across the lifecycle of the products, processes, and services
  4. Have a seamless information flow across PLM, LCA, and asset management tools and enterprise system tools such as Supply Chain Management, ERP, and MES.

In discussing these needs, the session will focus primarily on sustainability and environmental impact assessment.  To enable the preceding capabilities, it will focus on the role of explicit semantics and contexts to facilitate the required information modeling and conformance testing.

The goal of this special session is a more holistic understanding of the relationships between PLM and LCE. We hope to get papers from different engineering disciplines.  These papers should concentrate on common issues and specific challenges that enable the transition from PLM to LCE and eventually to sustainable manufacturing. We welcome full-length research papers as well as application papers that address measurement science and standards issues.  Excellent papers from this session will be selected for publication in the International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management (www.inderscience.com/ijplm).

Session Organizers: Dr. Sudarsan Rachuri & Kevin Lyons, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, {sudarsan,klyons}@nist.gov