An Approach to Simultaneous Development in Machine Tool Industry


Michael Zäh, Florian Grätz, Haitham Rashidy
Institute for Machine Tools and Industrial Management (iwb) Technical University of Munich
15 Boltzmann str., 85748 Garching – Germany Tel: +49 (0)89 289-15500 Fax: +49 (0)89 289-15555 www.iwb.tum.de

ABSTRACT: The development of the modern machine tool is an interdisciplinary process characterized by intensive information exchange between the fields of mechanical, electrical and software engineering. However, the currently sequential development procedure hinders shortening the time-to-market. This paper presents a method for simultaneous development of machine tools, based on a hierarchical functional description of the machine. The aim is to devise a support environment for the actual planning, design and documentation processes and, at the same time, allows all involved developers to handle a common redundancy-free set of data. A software prototype based on the commercially available program COMOS PT is presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the method.

Keywords : Concurrent Engineering, Simultaneous Product Development, Installation Planning.

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