The Silver Bullet? Using and Implementing OMG's Manufacturing Domain Standards

Relying on standards is an adequate solution for solving integration problems and saving on investment in software or hardware. There are good opportunities for exchanging standardized components for pieces from another vendor with a justifiable amount of time and money. This is one of reasons for more than 800 companies and institutions joining the Object Management Group (OMG). The OMG sets important industry standards in the area of object oriented design (UML), middleware (CORBA) and vertical markets. For the engineering domain, there is a bundle of standards available from the Manufacturing Domain Task Force, which address PDM access, transport of process data and a standard interface to CAD systems. This paper gives an overview of the standardization process, as well as presenting the current status of the relevant specifications and looking at future activities. The main part focuses on our experience with PDM Enablers and CAD Services in recent and ongoing research projects. We discuss the functional coverage of both standards, as well as implementation aspects for the interface and interoperability issues relating to specific integration tasks. The paper concludes with an assessment of the practical relevance of the OMG Standards and an overview of future work.