Product Modern Design Platform to Support Product Development in Distributed Resource Environment

The manufacturers are competing against each other based on their development ability. A manufacturer who wants to do better than others must emphasize its ability of product development. The resources that product development relies on are more distributed than ever along with the varying of the global design environment. So more and more resources outside of enterprises are needed during the product design process. The platform supporting the product modern design under the circumstance of distributed resources will meet the requirement of the enterprise’s product design and development under such conditions. The platform will also simplify the implementation on the integral of the IT support system for design resources outside of enterprises. In this paper the characteristics and supporting technologies of product design platform, which supporting the distributed design resource circumstance and centering on the enterprise, are studied. The building method of the platform is presented and a prototype of the product design platform is developed. Three subsystems are included in the platform. They are the product requirements analysis system, the product design planning system and the knowledge management system. Many design tasks can be supported on the platform, such as product requirement analysis, concept design, detail design, experiment, and maintenance knowledge acquirement. The distributing, implementing, tracking and managing of product lifecycle tasks can also be supported on the platform. The distributed design resources could be sealed as application components to provide design services. Design work flow model and knowledge flow model are built and controlled through the FIPER software. The design knowledge is managed based on the ontology theory. The virtual prototype of a complex product can be built and run more easily with the design platform. The process of building a virtual prototype could be described simply as following. Firstly the distributed models are sealed as application components. Then the components are published in the FIPER environment. Finally, the virtual prototype is built in the form of design work flow model in which the distributed components are integrated. To simulate the coupling of multi-discipline behaviors in a complex product design, the coupling formula is proposed to express the relations of different discipline behaviors. Based on the coupling formula, the coupling simulation can be run on the platform. Finally, a lifecycle performance prototype of an internal combustion engine is developed through the platform to verify the platform’s functions.