Evolution and communication of geometry based product information within an extended enterprise

The importance of conducting efficient product development is growing steadily as traditional market boundaries diminish and are replaced by global market conditions. Digital product development builds on the foundation that digital mock-ups replace physical mock-ups, and this has the potential for strongly improving the efficiency of the product development process. This is a rather drastic change compared to the conventional way of conducting product development, and it cannot be implemented overnight. It requires the extended enterprise to rely on geometry based product models. Business excellence is therefore partially synonymous with managing these models and making them available, and relevant, to different activities throughout the product development process. This thesis deals with the establishment of two key expressions, Geometry Management Process and Geometry Based Product Information. The objective is to improve the utilisation of Geometry Based Product Information by supporting the product development process with adequate methods, tools and processes for managing this type of information. This objective is partly realised by the elimination of rework in the downstream activities of traditional design departments. There are numerous influencing factors and the research approach has been to collect these factors into four separate but correlating domains. The consistency in the approach stems from the fact that all research work is conducted with a geometrical perspective on all types of activity, requirement and process. The methodology is elaborated through participation and surveys of real cases in ongoing projects and activities when developing heavy-duty trucks.Godkänd; 2005; 20060925 (cira