Technical Product Modelling

Abstract

The description, from the technical point of view, of each product variant is a distinctive function of configuration systems. The performance of this key function requires, on the part of the company, the elaboration of a large amount of technical information. Consequently, the knowledge required to process such technical information has to be captured within appropriate logical structures. The present chapter:

• summarizes the main difficulties associated with the organization of technical information, in the case of configurable products;

• explains the ‘traditional’ approaches used to describe product variants from the technical point of view, illustrating their limitations;

• discusses the concept of a generic bill of materials, i.e. the logical structure that generally implements the technical model;

• supplies guidelines for designing generic bills of materials.