The Language of Collaborative Manufacturing

今天的机器和产品在材料、形式、结构、控制和驱动系统方面都非常先进，以至于它们需要的专业知识和资源甚至超出了世界上最大的组织所能达到的范围。因此，一架现代飞机的设计、开发和制造，都是由一个分布在全球的大型组织网络承担的。虽然定义这个网络本身就构成了一个设计问题，但管理如此庞大、高度分布、高价值的项目是目前业界最关心的挑战。这不仅是因为最近一系列引人注目的成本超支、交付挫折和项目失败，还因为知识产权的泄露、风险暴露以及难以获取设计记录、经验教训、决策和基本原理。前面描述的工程项目非常依赖于两个关键的工具集。这些是电子通信工具（如电子邮件）和数字对象（报告、CAD模型和仿真）。这些通信工具和数字对象是基本相关的。全球各地的工程师通过电子方式进行交流，以创建和发展数字对象，这些对象是产品和机器的设计，制造，组装，交付和维护的基础。通信和数字对象的这种关系和共同进化是每个工程项目的核心，它不仅体现了工程工作本身，还体现了对知识产权、决策、基本原理和问题解决的控制。基于这些原因，本文提出，通过理解通信和数字对象的关系和共同进化，有可能改善工程项目的管理、控制和绩效。这项研究的愿景将通过一套ICT工具来实现，这些工具体现了捕获和分析工程通信和数字对象的内容和演变的新方法和方法，以及用于生成、表示、交互和解释定义为通信和数字对象签名的新方法和方法。术语签名用于表示在某个时间点或一段时间内通信的一个或多个维度和/或数字对象之间的有意义的关系。研究计划首先考虑通信和数字对象的两个维度。这里的目的是描述所谓的“协同制造的语言”（通信的内容）和“数字对象的进化模式”（数字对象的构建和变化），并探索对内容和结构进行分类的方法，以及生成签名的方法。然后，该课程探讨了这两个维度的共同进化之间的关系。这里的目标是建立签名集、签名之间的关系和签名模式，这些签名体现了对改进协作工程的各个方面（如前面所述）的意义。然后，这个阶段研究表示和可视化签名/模式的方法。该计划的第三阶段研究项目利益相关者互动和有意义地解释签名集、关系和模式的新方法和途径，目的是提供持续的实时反馈。这种能力将使问题提前预警，改进管理，提高生产率，并最终改进产品的设计和制造。除了这三个主要阶段之外，该方案还有一个研究环节，重点是测试和验证新方法和方法，确定最佳做法的特征，以及建立和管理协作工作的新方法，这些将作为外联和知识转移活动的一部分。

Today's machines and products are so advanced in terms of their materials, form, construction, control and drive systems that they require expertise and resource that extends beyond the reach of even the world's largest organisations. As a consequence, the design, development and manufacture of, for example, a modern aircraft is undertaken by a large globally distributed network of organisations. While defining this network poses a design problem by itself, it is the challenge of managing such large, highly distributed, high value projects that is of upmost concern to industry presently. This is not only because of the recent spate of high profile cost overruns, delivery setbacks and collapsed projects, but also because of aspects of leakage of intellectual property, exposure to risk, and difficulties capturing design records, lessons learned, decisions and rationale.Engineering projects of the sort previously described are critically dependent upon two key toolsets. These are electronic communication tools (e.g. email) and digital objects (reports, CAD models and simulations). These communication tools and digital objects are fundamentally related. Engineers around the globe communicate electronically in order to create and evolve digital objects which are the basis for the design, manufacture, assembly, delivery and maintenance of products and machines. It is this relationship and co-evolution of communication and digital objects that lies at the heart of every engineering project, embodying not only the engineering work itself but also control of intellectual property, decision making, rationale and problem solving. For these reasons, it is proposed that, through an understanding of the relationship and co-evolution of communication and digital objects, it is possible to improve the management, control and performance of engineering projects.The vision of this research will be realised through a suite of ICT tools that embody new methods and approaches for capturing and analysing the content and evolution of engineering communication and digital objects, and new methods and approaches for generating, representing, interacting with, and interpreting what are defined as signatures of in communications and digital objects. The term signature is used to represent a meaningful relationship between one or more dimensions of communication and/or digital objects at a point in time or over a period of time.The research programme firstly considers the two dimensions of communication and digital objects. The aim here is to characterise what are referred to as the "language of collaborative manufacturing" (content of communication) and "patterns of evolution of digital objects" (construction and changes to digital objects) and to explore means of classifying content and structure, and means of generating signatures.The programme then explores the relationship between the co-evolution of these two dimensions. Here the aim is to establish sets of signatures, relationships between signatures and patterns of signatures that embody meaning for improving aspects of collaborative engineering such as those previously stated. This phase then investigates means of representing and visualising the signatures/patterns.The third phase of the programme researches new methods and approaches for project stakeholders to interact and meaningfully interpret signature sets, relationships and patterns with the aim of providing continuous real-time feedback. Such capability will enable advance warning of issues, improved management, increased productivity and ultimately improved design and manufacture of the product.In addition to the three major phases, the programme has a research strand focussed on testing and validation of the new methods and approaches, and characterising best practice, as well as new ways of setting up and managing collaborative work which will be used as part of outreach and knowledge transfer activities.