Chapter 5: Product, Process and Workflow Management

Title: Flexibility in PLM deployment processes: focus on workflow and services

Author(s): Lilia Gzara Yesilbas

Address: Nancy Research Center for Automatic Control (CRAN) CNRS UMR 7039. BP239. 54 506 Vandoeuvre-Les-Nancy Cedex. France

Reference: International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management 2005 pp. 302 - 313

Abstract/Summary: Traditionally, workflow systems are used to support static and deterministic processes, i.e. processes which are completely known in advance and do not change frequently. This has limited the scope of PLM to support design processes, which are semi-deterministic, even non deterministic and emergent. This paper provides an approach for deploying adaptive workflow to meet design processes’ requirements, based on a reusable father process, dynamic change and anticipation concepts. Moreover, PLM market, initially intended to mechanical industry, has been extended to various industrial sectors and the spectrum of PLM users has widened. Thus, in order to conquer the new market and enhance PLM appropriation by users, PLM vendors are obliged to provide applications with personalized services (functions, data treatments) and then to do a lot of specific developments. To solve this problem, a component based approach to deploy personalized services by reuse of elementary and generic functions is discussed.

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