A PDM Integrated Assembly Planning Environment for Automotive Suppliers Industry

This paper reports part of the results of a three year project in collaboration with companies in the automotive and aerospace industry, aiming to develop new methodologies for Computer-Aided Assembly Process Planning (CAAPP). The aims of this project were to investigate, study the feasibility of integrating CAAPP with data management tools via a product model and review existing systems and methodologies. The project then became focused on finding solutions to some of the limiting factors that have kept CAAPP an immature technology for many years. This objective is satisfied by the integration of CAAPP functionality with a Product Data Management (PDM) tool, providing a data control framework and a high-level data structure to form the basis of planning. The paper introduces a prototype system based on the described approach which has been tested for the assembly planning of an automotive supplier company ArvinMeritor.