Exploration of Collaborative Design Spaces: Student Engineering Interactions and Workflows in Product Development

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) initiatives can improve an enterprise's efficiency by increasing collaborative design opportunities within its business structure.PLM solutions provide mediums to collaborate on all aspects of a company's workflow, including engineering, testing, manufacturing, marketing, and general services.This paper examines the major PLM tools and software used to establish a collaborative design space: computer-aided design (CAD), computeraided engineering (CAE), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), and product data management (PDM).The interactions between these PLM tools and a business' organizational structure are analyzed to determine some of the most effective PLM integration strategies to improve collaboration for all functions.Engineering enterprises split many of the major functions into technical and non-technical categories and match them with PLM solutions to create a collaborative design space that incorporates all departments.An educational case study was conducted on a collaborative student design team whose objective was to create a digital twin of a scaled-down off-road tracked ground vehicle.Siemens Teamcenter was integrated within the team's design procedures to observe and optimize the engineering design process using PLM tools.The results of integrating advanced PDM software into their workflow, including troubleshooting issues and problems, will be explored in this paper.PDM and workflow interactions throughout the case study produced many unique outcomes that required additional PLM engineering solutions.Overall, advanced PDM software may increase the collaboration and efficiency of design processes, but often require additional program resources.