COE Headquarters
TECHNOLOGY UPDATE
PDES, Inc. Consortium & LOTAR
Mike Jahadi, Ph.D., P.E.,
Thank you for the opportunity to inform you of PDES, Inc, Consortium & LOng Term Archival and Retrieval of digital product, technical and PDM data (LOTAR). My name is Mike Jahadi and I am a Lockheed Martin Technical Fellow, President and Chairman of the PDES, Inc. Executive Board.
PDES, Inc. is an international industry/government consortium committed to accelerating the development and implementation of standards that enable enterprise integration and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) interoperability for its member companies.
STEP (the STandard for the Exchange of Product model data), also known as ISO 10303, is the international standard that describes the physical and functional characteristics of a product. Product data describes how the products of a company are designed, analyzed, built, maintained, and used by customers. PDES, Inc. members recognize that efficient flow of product information within a company is critical to driving down costs, reducing cycle time, and improving quality. As engineering and manufacturing companies increasingly partner with other companies to bring products to market, the need for interoperability in their global supply chains also increases. PDES, Inc. members work together to employ product data standards that address an organizations’ critical interoperability issues making it possible to efficiently exchange and share product data with trading partners worldwide.
Membership Structure
Currently we have over 25 member companies within the PDES, Inc. consortium. Membership includes organizations from industry, government, non-profit, vendors, and academia. PDES resources are dedicated to STEP development, deployment, and/or implementation.
Membership Benefits
By participating in this consortium we make sure that our requirements get incorporated into the ISO standards. Through pilot projects and implementor forums, PDES, Inc. members gain hands-on experience in using STEP and implementing the standard in their businesses. In addition, to realizing competitive advantages from their use of STEP, the members work together to influence both the enhancement of the STEP standard and the development strategies of organizations that provide commercial STEP software products.
PDES. Inc. Technical Efforts For 2010-2012
PDES, Inc. members work together to advance the development of technologies and standards related to the model based enterprise. The Digital Enterprise summarizes accomplishments and specific plans for the current phase of work in relationship to the
PDES, Inc. Vision for 2020
Be the world leader in accelerating the development, implementation, and use of STEP and related product data standards to deliver extraordinary business value to member organizations.
PDES, Inc. project teams, comprised of the member organizations’ technical resources, collaborate in person and via the Internet to work on the following projects.
Project Initiatives
PDES, Inc. projects are organized into five key initiatives. PDES, Inc. members can take advantage of the lessons learned and recommended practices developed through PDES, Inc. activities to deploy STEP throughout their companies sooner and with greater assurance of success
Information Standards
Under the Information Standards initiative, the Integration and Infrastructure project is addressing aspects of developing, publishing, and implementing STEP standards and recommended practices in the rapidly changing Internet environment, emphasizing integration of STEP with XML technologies. The team also provides support to modular Application Protocol developers and vendors by maintaining the STEP Modules Repository and providing training & documentation related to team activities. A key activity is the convergence of AP203 and AP214 into AP242 for managing the 3D model-based engineering.
Model Based Sustainment
Under the Model Based Sustainment Initiative, the LOTAR project brings together experts in preservation of digital data to ensure sustainability of technical information. The team tests, refines, and improves methods for ensuring that product data remains accessible, accurate, and reusable throughout the product lifecycle and for future reuse of its design data.
Model Based Manufacturing
The Model Based Manufacturing Initiative is focusing on developing and implementing the use of STEP APs to support modeling capabilities across the Digital Manufacturing environment and bridging across the Model Based Enterprise. Key projects identified include: Next Generation Visualization Environment, Readiness Level Integration, Cross Domain Tool Interoperability, Information Standards for Discrete Event Simulation, Information Standards for Value Stream Mapping
Model Based Engineering
The Model Based Engineering Initiative includes several key projects: Systems Engineering, Customer Supplier Interoperability, & Engineering Analysis. The Systems Engineering project is addressing the fundamental problem of how to standardize, interconnect, and reuse the systems engineering information contained in large arrays of computer-based models.
Data Exchange Testing
The Integration and Data Exchange testing team works with ProSTEP (a consortium based in Europe) to manage and conduct systems interoperability testing for CAD/PDM systems and other STEP software applications and translators. Interoperability testing goals, as defined by the vendors, are to:
- Accelerate STEP software development
- Implement functionality for today’s requirements
- Identify functionality for tomorrow's needs
- Avoid roadblocks by establishing agreed upon approaches
- Increase user confidence by providing system and AP/Module interoperability testing
- Ensure new functionality is compatible with existing implementations The team is also leading the Product Lifecycle Support Implementors forum.
LOng Term Archival and Retrieval of digital product, technical and PDM data (LOTAR) - Mission of the LOTAR International project is to globalize a standards-based archival and retrieval mechanism for digital product and technical information through the ongoing harmonization and standardization efforts of Aerospace and Defense organizational affiliations.
Scope of the LOTAR project is to:
- Identify efforts aimed at long term data retention
- Assist in the appropriate usage of STEP technology in identified data retention efforts
- Define implementation concepts of data retention for MBE efforts
- the convergence of these AP 203 and AP214 Application Protocols into a single unified STEP “AP 242”,
Membership
Currently LOTAR member companies in America includes; BAE Systems, Boeing, Bombardier, Embraer, General Dynamics, General Electric, Goodrich, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, Sandia National Labs, Spirit Aero.
In addition, the company members for Europe are; Airbus, CASSIDIAN, Dassault Aviation, Eurocopter, Israel Aerospace Industries and SAFRAN Labinal.
LOTAR Team has made a significant accomplishments, specifically in the areas of PMI, 3D Data Tessellation and External Element Reference Support, Part 200 for Long Term Archival of PDM Data and 3D Composite Design Data( specifically Part 300). Several different parts of Final Ballot EN/NAS 9300 are under review by the AIA EMC and targeted for release this quarter (Parts 002, 005, 007, 100, 110 and 115). For the next several months, LOTAR will continue to work on Part 120V2, which governs full semantic representation and presentation of Geometry and PMI entities.
In summary, we have achieved a coordinated effort between Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), ASD-STAN (Aerospace and Defense Industries Association of Europe), PDES Inc., and ProSTEP*. This effort is aimed at a harmonized and consistent set of open standards. As a result long term archiving and retrieval will provide capabilities for product definition, data exchange, and interoperability.
*The ProSTEP iViP Association is an international sectoral community comprising leading companies in the automotive and aerospace industries, system vendors and research institutes. The aim of the ProSTEP iViP Association is to find solutions for the challenges facing the manufacturing industry as a result of networked collaboration in a worldwide development network.
To learn more about PDES, Inc., see the PDES, Inc. website at http://www.pdesinc.org.
