Knowledge Based Flexible and Integrated PLM System at Ford

This paper reviews the perennial problem of knowledge management / information integration in large scale, complex and knowledge intensive organisations such as automotive industries. Automotive industry is under increased pressure to produce low cost customised products using innovative agile manufacturing techniques. Presently this innovation has focused on the improved process development between different stages of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). However in terms of implementation the application data management techniques have lagged behind leaving these processes disjointed and lacking in automation. Assembly line design and configuration consist of highly creative and complex tasks that involve extensive communication and information exchange among distributed teams. At Ford the assembly line design or reconfiguration process rely on PLM system to provide necessary information. This paper proposes an improved model based on innovation in the PLM to quickly adapt to the new feasible assembly line configuration that satisfies the ever changing user requirements. Building on existing work in the use of ontologies for knowledge management, the paper applies these techniques to PLM system. The implementation has been first applied to a prototype rig and then around a Ford production line in UK to efficiently exploit PLM systems using a state of the art web service infrastructure based upon ontology.