DISCO

DISCO: Design and Implementation of a Web-

based Platform for Industrial PDM and

Collaborative Design

Alberto Olmo1, Carmen Aguilera1, Alejandro García1

1

Ingeniería y soluciones informáticas (ISOIN), Avd. de la Astronomía,1. Torneo Parque Empresarial

41015. Sevilla, Spain, {aolmo, caguilera, agarcia}@isoin.net



Abstract

This paper presents the design and implementation of a web-based platform for complex industrial product design

and simulation, which integrates all the stakeholders in the product lifecycle by using collaborative tools. The

research method used in this work relies on the analysis of industrial design and simulation, collaborative product

development tools, security and control related aspects and the integration of innovative web 2.0 functions. This

work has resulted in the practical implementation of DISCO, a SME oriented solution, which is based on a client-

server architecture and utilizes the web as an efficient way to interchange data in collaborative product development

processes. The validation of the platform was performed in pilot cases in the aeronautics and electrical equipment

sectors.



Keywords

Web 2.0, Product data management, Collaborative design, Software as a Service, open source software





1 Introduction

Product development systems are currently experiencing a major evolution towards distribution

and collaboration, allowing designers to closely work with suppliers, manufacturing partners and

even handing control over key product decisions directly to users, providing their clients with

much more customized and satisfactory products, in a much more reduced period of time.

Web 2.0 presents powerful possibilities to improve current product development tools, enabling

the change from a centralized product development team into a much more dynamic, innovative

and agile workgroup. According to McKinsey Survey on Internet technologies, companies are

starting to use Web 2.0 technologies to design and develop new products, for example, by setting

up systems to gather and share ideas.



The aim of this work is to make use of these new trends to design and implement a

groundbreaking platform for industrial PDM and collaborative design, where traditional

difficulties for SMEs in the practical utilisation of these commercial solutions, namely high

economic cost, implementation difficulties or necessity of specialized staff, are overcome.

As a result of this research, the platform DISCO has been deployed. DISCO consists of a web-

based platform totally implemented in open source software. It proposes a ―Software as a

Service‖ (SaaS) business model which frees SMEs from prohibitively economic costs, necessity

of support service and all the drawbacks mentioned before.

2 Existing Theories and Work

Research is actively being carried out to develop methodologies and technologies to support the

collaborative work of geographically dispersed teams, experiencing product development

systems major technological innovations and paradigm shifts. (Li and Qiu, 2006).



Software vendors are currently immersed in a strong competition to innovate and to take the lead

in the huge business opportunities that can be found in the market. Some detected problems in

these CAD implemented systems are the heterogeneity of formats used (GDL, X3D, STEP,

IGES…) which hampers collaborative applications, and the need to achieve an efficient 3D data

conversion to light shareable web formats, covering data compression, mesh simplification and

object prioritising.



Roy and Kodkani (1999) developed a web-based framework to support collaborative product

design with various levels of abstracted product models, where each designer creates his model

using the conventional CAD package and uploads this model to a database system in a server.

Kan et al. (2001) designed a graphical synchronization engine to support some collaborative

functions for multiple users, basing their work in Java Applet and VRML technologies.

In another web-based prototype, developed by Zhang et al. (2004), product structure trees and

product data master models were used to capture and manage essential and inter-related product

information and properties, such as design data, material properties, process planning and supply

management.



Another number of research projects have also been recently carried out to provide collaborative

and distributed solutions from the perspectives of CAD, CAM and PDM/PLM. (Wang et al

2002, Yang and Xue 2003, Li et al 2004). In these proposed collaborative development

environments, it is sometimes difficult to guarantee the security of the system and provide an

adequate control of the utilization of collaborative functions, resulting in a poor coordination of

the design team.



Recent research into enterprise collaboration services has also been performed in some European

FP6 projects, among which we find VIVACE (Value Improvement through a Virtual

Aeronautical Collaborative Enterprise), ECOLEAD (European Collaborative networked

organizations leadership initiative), or DBE (Digital Business Ecosystem).



Web 2.0 is rapidly changing collaborative work, finding now in structured wikis (collaborative

web sites that can be edited by multiple users) and blogs (web sites that consist of annotation or

posts arranged in reverse chronological order) two of the most useful tools which are beginning

to be integrated in PLM systems.



A great variety of software applications and commercial solutions are currently appearing in the

market, considerably improving interaction among designers, manufacturers, suppliers and

customers. Applications such as Mindquarry, Twiki or ClearSpace enable file sharing, structured

wiki and task management. 3D design applications such as OnesSpace, CollabCAD or Alibre

enable secure messaging, multimedia collaborative functions and real-time team modelling with

data sharing.

However, the greatest obstacle for SMEs to incorporate a commercial PDM/PLM solution in

their businesses comes from the elevated economic costs that this software usually involves, and

from the difficulties found to implement it, being necessary a great effort to specialize a group of

people in its utilization. One of the most important features of web-based applications, is the

possibility to run ―Software as a Service‖ business models, which can significantly improve

current PDM/PLM applications, as it will be shown.







3 Research Approach

The overall research goal was to design and implement an innovative web-based platform for

industrial PDM and collaborative design, which sorted out the practical problems found by

SMEs in the application of these tools, thus achieving:





 A thorough analysis of users specifications, understanding the problems and drawbacks

found in current commercial solutions.

 Efficient PDM and collaborative design, taking into account aspects such as security and

control in collaboration

 Complete Open Source Software implementation, with all the advantages this involves over

proprietary systems.

 3D visualization in the design and display of model catalogues.

 Efficient integration of Web 2.0 tools to interchange data in collaborative product

development processes.



After an extensive analysis of the state-of-the-art had been carried out, with the existing

problems and solutions found in practical applications, the design and implementation of the

platform was performed. The resultant implementation was finally subjected to a validation

procedure. Even though DISCO is a multisectorial application, the validation process has been

focused on the determined sectors of aeronautics and electrical equipment, in order to see its

practical benefits.







4 Findings

DISCO was finally released at the end of August 2007. A brief analysis of the platform is made

in the following sub-sections, where the general perspective of the system, technologies used,

features and requirements are exposed.



4.1 System Overview

DISCO is a web-based platform for industrial design and simulation, which integrates PDM and

CRM functions in a simple environment for collaborative product development, optimizing the

design to facilitate its use to SMEs. The platform has been implemented in PHP and uses

MySQL as database engine.



The features integrated into the system are the following ones:

 Product Data Management throughout its life cycle.

 Complex product configuration.

 Design and visualization of products and assemblies in 3D.

 Manufacturing-oriented design (DFM)

 Collaborative Design (wiki, repository of files and version control)

 Client Management and Payment.

 Supplier Management.

 Management of orders and parts delivery.

 Statistics of sales by customer, product and/or supplier

 All listings generated in PDF.

 Simple Backups.

 Support and Customer Service: requested service Management.



4.2 System Architecture

DISCO is built with a client-server architecture, thus allowing multiple users (customers) to

request petitions to the same application server.



The system is stored on the application server, which contains script or programs to run PHP

code (dynamic Website). The database is contained in the BD Mysql server. Both servers can

reside on the same or different machines, a decision taken by the user who installs the

application.



Users (consumers, managers, designers, etc.) access or request response to the application server

via common web browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla, etc.) The application server listens and

collects the various petitions received, subsequently executes and finally returns the results of the

operations requested to the client program.



In case that a request is required to access the Database (BD), the application server sends a

consultation request to the BD manager, which collects, executes and returns results to the

application server. Finally the application server sends the received reply to the client software

(Web browser) so that it can be displayed.







Application

Server Data base

Server





Web Server

(Apache) Manage

HTML Sql

Client System DB

Request request Management



Web

Run

Browser Sql

r

HTML Response Mysql DB

response Script PHP







Figure 1. Three-Layer architecture of the system

4.2 Technologies used

All the technologies used in the development of DISCO are Open Source Software, which fulfils

one of the main requirements set at the beginning of the work.

There is an application server and a Data Base server, as the application server has installed an

application whose job is to respond to the requests sent by the web browsers. This application is

a web server which, together with some PHP Scripts, correctly executes dynamic pages. We

have chosen Apache Web Server for this feature because it is one of the most extended open

source web servers. The same reasons have led us to choose MySQL as the data base server.



To display information on web browsers and show it to the user, we need dynamic pages. The

technology chosen to make our pages dynamic has been PHP, because it’s a Scripting language

that allows applications to be implemented on the server. It can be defined as a high level,

interpreted language, whose code is embedded in HTML pages. It is one of the most widely used

languages in the world with open source Apache server but it can also be run under Windows.

With the objective of designing and displaying products in 3D, VRML has been the language

preferred. VRML97 (Virtual Reality Modelling Language) is a file format for developing

interactive three-dimensional objects in real time over the Internet, intranets and customer

systems. The application areas of VRML range from the display of mechanical designs and

scientific applications, multimedia presentations and geographic information services to

educational services, entertainment, web pages and interactive shared virtual worlds. VRML

language provides the main following advantages:

 VRML viewers are usually free plug-ins for traditional web browsers.

 Extensibility: It is not associated with any company-specific hardware or software

development, but it is open source.

 Navigation and interaction with the 3D world is allowed, admitting the definition of objects

behaviour.

 Multi-user environments can be built, which enables the use in multiple browsers at the same

time.

 Hyperlinks to other files and applications can be specified.

 Despite complete environments download times can be high (100 Kb-300 Kb are not

sufficient to recreate complex 3D worlds), these times are much lower than those required

for sound and video, and optimization applications can be developed.





4.3 Technical specifications of the system

The technical features of the system are summarized here:

 Server:

 Web server with PHP support (Example: Apache)

 PHP 4.x

 MySQL 3.0 or superior

 3D modelling in VRML97 (Control Scripts in Java Applet)

 Client:

 Web Browser (Mozilla, Firefox, Epiphany, Galeon or Microsoft Internet Explorer)

 PDF reader for Listings (Acrobat Reader, for example)



Server and client can work on the same computer. However, it is possible to have a computer in

a local network functioning as a server and the remaining, less-powered computers, with the role

of customers. The optimisation of the system is obtained with its installation in an extranet or

Internet environment, allowing the accessibility for individual user profiles from any location

and at any time, facilitating this way the mutual collaboration and interaction.



4.4 Implemented tools

Tools included in the system are:

 Complex product management: It deals with all data concerning the product (PDM), from its

design to its sale, facilitating the creation and management of complex product configuration

and materials list.





GRAPHICS Documents



PRODUCT

MANUAL



PRODUCT

Documents



Version 3 Version 3

Versión 2 Version 2



Component ―A‖ Component

―B‖ PRODUCT

Component or

parts







GRAPHICS ―A‖ Documents ―A‖



COMPONENT

MANUAL ―A‖ ―A‖



Component “A”

Documents



Version 3 Version 3

Version 2 Version 2



Component Component

Component “A”

―A.1‖ ―B.1‖

Component or

parts









Figure 2. Complex product management





 Purchase-sale management: Online product ordering is available. The order is sent to the

company administrator, who will process it.

 Customer support functionalities: online support service, clients support (registered users can

subscribe to receive notifications), online product information.

 3D product interactive model to facilitate the visualization of the product.

 Design for manufacturing (DFM): The structuring and modularization of the information

helps the designers to reduce the cost and difficulty of manufacturing an item.

 Economic and financial management: Clients and suppliers management, bills, packing lists,

sale statistics.

 Collaborative functions: The system offers information interchange tools and collaborative

techniques as a support to concurrent engineering: shared files, version control and Wiki.



4.5 Pilot cases

The platform implemented was finally subjected to a validation process, which consisted in its

practical application in two specific sectors: aeronautics and electrical equipment.

These two sectors were selected in order to detect their operation features and their specific

needs, and to configure the system in consequence. Data bach-input from clients, products and

concrete processes was performed in the information system. After carrying out operation tests

of all implemented functionalities and integral verification of the overall performance, the

precise corrections were made, in order to judge the system as a valid one



5 Conclusions

In this paper we have presented DISCO, a web-based platform for industrial PDM and

collaborative design introducing Web 2.0 in product design activities. This platform succeeds in

finding a solution for the practical problems found by SMEs in the application of these tools.

DISCO is an open source software web-based platform, thus reducing costs, difficulties and time

for PYMES. The validation of DISCO in the aeronautics and electrical equipment sectors has

proved its real benefits and advantages.

These research results set good basis to continue and extend collaborative design in Extended

Enterprise and Collaborative Networks structures. Further research in advanced streaming,

rendering and compression formats is needed, as well as in intelligent visual engines and services

for continuous, remote and distributed monitoring and analyses of product development activity,

as well as Semantic web which open new possibilities for industrial applications.



Acknowledgement

This work has been partly funded by the Regional Government of Andalusia under the Regional Innovation

Programme. The authors wish to acknowledge the Innovation Agency for their support.



References

McKinsey survey on Internet technologies, How business are using web 2.0. A Mckinsey global survey. 2007.

Li, W.D. and QIU Z.M., (2006) State-of-the-art technologies and methodologies for collaborative product

development systems, International Journal of Production Research, 44 (13), pp 2525-2559.

Wang, L.H., Shen, W.M., Xie, H., Neelamkavil, J. and Pardasani, A. (2002). Collaborative Conceptual design—

state of the art and future trends. CAD, 34(13), pp 981–996.

Yang, H. and Xue, D. (2003) Recent research on developing web-based manufacturing systems: A review. Int. J.

Prod. Res. 41(15), pp 3601–3629.

Li, W.D., Ong, S.K., Fuh, J.Y.H., Wong, Y.S., Lu, Y.Q. and Nee, A.Y.C. (2004) Feature-based design in a

collaborative and distributed environment. CAD, 36(9), pp 775–797.

Kan, H.Y., Duffy, V.G. and Su, C.J. (2001), An Internet virtual reality collaborative environment for effective

product design. Computers in Industry, 45(2), pp 197–213.

Zhang, S.S., Shen, W.M. and Ghenniwa, H. (2004) A review of Internet-based product information sharing and

visualisation. Computers in Industry, 54(1), pp 1–15.