Based on PLM system implementation, the practice and thinking of making standardization work intelligent

0 Preface

In March 2016, the human-machine battle between Google's artificial intelligence Go software AlphaGo and Lee Sedol, the former world champion of Go, shocked the world. AlphaGo's victory means that intelligent technologies based on "deep learning and high performance computing" are developing rapidly and can be gradually applied to other industries.

With the concept of "Industry 4.0", it is imperative for enterprises to carry out electronic, intelligent, standardized and modular intelligent research and development, intelligent logistics and intelligent production. In this situation, as an important basic work of enterprise technology management, standardization management also needs to carry out intelligent upgrading.

As the leader of China's wind power machine manufacturing enterprises, Goldwind Technology has always attached great importance to the standardization of enterprise technical management, and professional standardization engineers are responsible for the standardization review of enterprise drawings, documents, process guidance and other technical documents. In the past, these works were mainly carried out based on paper documents, which was heavy in workload, time-consuming and laborious, and prone to omissions and even errors. Since 2013, the company has begun to implement a Product Lifecycle management (PLM) system (hereinafter referred to as PLM system) to achieve electronic and intelligent enterprise technology management. In recent years, the author has been responsible for the implementation of PLM system in the company, and has integrated most of the standardization work into the system, and implemented the standardization and intelligent process step by step.

In the process of carrying out this work, many detours have been taken, and many excellent methods have been found. This paper introduces the program and typical cases about standardization to intelligent work from several aspects, for the reference and reference of companies that are implementing and planning to implement intelligent platform management system.

1 Introduction of intelligent standardization work plan based on PLM system

Based on the implementation of the PLM system, the content of standardization into intelligent management can be divided into four categories: one is the intelligence of design document standardization, the second is the intelligence of product pattern standardization, and the third is the intelligence of technical change process and technical change document standardization review. Fourth, the establishment, management and application of electronic libraries of international standards, national, industry standards and enterprise standards. The following describes the development ideas and programs of these four types of work in turn.

1.1 Intelligent design document standardization

Design document standardization involves the integrity of the document, the level of document approval, the secret level, the numbering rules and so on. The intelligent solutions of these tasks are as follows

1.1.1 Implementation plan of product document integrity check

In the standardization review, the inspection of product document integrity is a very important item, and each company will stipulate different document integrity requirements for different models of products at different design stages. At the end of different design stages, standardization engineers need to check the documents that have been filed, are being signed and have not been prepared, which is a large workload.

To solve this problem, an intelligent management program for this work was customized and developed during the implementation of the PLM system. Firstly, product types with different technical difficulties were defined, and product document integrity requirements were formulated for each type of product at each design stage. In the integrity requirements table, there were columns of "Files to be archived" and "files to be archived". Through programming, the system can compare the retrieved archived documents with the archived documents, and realize the system to check the archived documents automatically. When the end of a product design stage, the standardization personnel only need to view the file integrity comparison report under the product can grasp the archiving of the file, no longer need manual verification, the working time from the original several hours to a few seconds, the correctness of the verification becomes 100%. The file integrity comparison report can be exported and viewed in real time. This function also plays a great role in project managers and program managers to grasp the progress of the project.

1.1.2 Implementation plan of document approval level, secret level, number and version management

The integrity of the signature of design documents is an important part of the standardization review. In the process of the review, there are often too many signatures, too few signatures, or too many signatures beyond the authority. The requirements of the signature node and the signature authority group can only be accurately executed when they are queried in the enterprise standard, and the signing efficiency and accuracy rate are not easy to control. Therefore, during the implementation of the PLM system, all nodes of the signing process of each document are defined in the system, and the scope of personnel within the authority is set at each signing point. When designers submit documents for signing, the scope of the signing node and personnel within the authority is displayed in the system operation page. According to the prompt information of each step, the designer can choose the correct signing node and signing person, avoiding the occurrence of previous problems. The development of document signing and reviewing function has made the integrity of document signing and reviewing fully realize intelligent management.

The secret level, number and version management of the design file are the same as the above, and all intelligent management is realized.

1.2 Intelligent examination of product drawing standardization

In the JB/T5054.7 "Product Drawing and Design Document Standardization Review" standard, there are detailed provisions on the standardization review content of general drawing, assembly drawing, outline drawing, installation drawing, parts drawing and various drawings. The main work of the standardization review is to review the format, format, name, code and various sizes of the drawing, the selection of dimensional tolerances and shape and position tolerances, the use of standard parts, borrowed parts and purchased parts, terminology, symbols, codes, units of measurement, the correctness of the content of the detail column of the drawing, whether the drawing conforms to the "mechanical drawing" standard and so on. In view of this complex work, a variety of intelligent measures are adopted in the implementation of the system to reduce manual work.

The following is a brief description of the two measures.

1.2.1 Implementation and use of 3D models of electrical parts and structural parts

3D design can achieve parameterization, feature-based, full correlation, etc., which makes the product easy to modify in the design stage, and also makes parallel work possible. Three-dimensional design image, intuitive, design structure is reasonable so that drawing reviewers at a glance. Automatic dimensioning of 3D designs reduces human design errors. It can use human-computer interaction for 3D graphics processing, automatic assembly system calibration, interference inspection, process analysis and design calculation, etc. Through the conversion of 3D models and 2D engineering drawings, 2D drawings can be directly generated for guiding production and assembly. The product tree based on the 3D model can automatically export the design BOM, that is, the product bill of materials, in the PLM system. A series of standards and specifications need to be formulated for the implementation of 3D model design mode, which mainly include the determination of model modeling requirements, 3D product geometric model design requirements, text, size, and tolerance labeling rules for 3D to 2D drawings, model simplification representation regulations, and naming regulations for design benchmarks. The development of these specifications ensures the smooth implementation of 3D models, and also reduces the workload of standardization personnel in reviewing drawings and bills of materials by more than 80%.

1.2.2 Standardize the types of design software used by professional designers, and establish a data sharing platform among design software

At present, there are many kinds of design software, each has its own advantages, different companies stipulate the use of design software is also different, designers often choose their preferences according to their own habits of design software, as one of the responsibilities of a standardized engineer is to standardize the use of design software, to ensure that the company's product data can be effectively preserved and used for a long time. Before the implementation of a PLM system, the type and version of the design software are often specified, but the implementation is always not firm enough due to special circumstances. In order to regulate such problems, when implementing PLM system, vigorously promote the integration of design software and PLM system, which can not only improve the efficiency of collaborative design, but also standardize the use of design software. Before the integration with the PLM system, it is necessary to determine the type and version of the design software, and formulate the use specifications of the design software and the integration specifications of the design software with the PLM system. Only in this way can the data in the design software be checked into the system and the data integration be realized. At the same time, based on the data integration of PLM system, develop the working mode of electrical, structural and process collaborative design, establish a database that can be used by all professional design software, realize the automatic export of design BOM, wiring table and wiring, and quickly prepare product operation instructions, maintenance and installation manuals and other technical documents. From product collaborative design to system platform integration to the automatic generation of relevant technical documents, the improvement of standardization efficiency is self-evident.

1.3 Intelligent technical change process and standardization review of technical change documents

Technology change management is a difficult problem that every R&D and manufacturing enterprise must face, and it is also the difficulty of standardization review. The main difficulties are the annotated management of the process. For example, the source interface of the change demand is not uniform and there is a lack of records; the pre-change review does not cover various business departments such as process, planning, procurement, warehousing and manufacturing; the change process and all the change data need manual management; the traceability is poor; and the effect of the implementation of technical changes is not verified.

In order to solve these problems, the feedback process of technical changes is first established in the PLM system. All change requirements are required to be put forward in the system process according to categories and received and confirmed by the product owner. The product owner organizes changes regularly according to the actual situation. And when the technical change plan is determined, it is necessary to check whether each problem in the problem feedback process has been solved. The requirements for technical changes, the necessity of changes and the impact of changes on subsequent departments were specifically increased and the application process for technical changes was developed. All relevant business departments realized that multiple business and technical departments could conduct review on the system at the same time through the "concurrent countersign" function of the PLM system, which greatly improved the efficiency of review. As for the technical change notification process, it mainly realizes the collaborative change of different change tasks of multiple majors in the same change execution process, the information before and after changes of all changed materials and the handling opinions of each changed material can realize the automatic information import into the system, the coordination of design BOM and process BOM changes, the use time of materials switching before and after changes, the targeted countersignature of departments involved in the implementation of changes, and the implementation of changes. Changes to material data and ERP integration. The development of these functions ensures the consistency of the input and output of changes, realizes the intelligent control and management of the change process, and the difficulty of standardization review is no longer a difficulty.

1.4 Establishment, management and application of electronic libraries of international standards, national, industry standards and enterprise standards

One of the important tasks in the standardization work is to implement international, national and industry standards, retrieve standard information in a timely manner, and provide timely and accurate standard information services to designers. In the past, there will be all kinds of standards used in the computer of each standardization personnel, and there is no intelligent means for the management of these standards, and it is inevitable that the problem of incorrect use will occur because the version is not updated in time. In order to solve such problems, an intelligent standard management system has been customized and developed on the existing management platform of the company, which can retrieve the standard data through the standard number, standard name, release date and the current status of the standard, and can provide standard electronic text online reading, standard download and other functions. Including corporate standards and laws and regulations. At the same time, it can publish the dynamic information of standards at any time, and grasp the latest trends of international, national and industry standards in time. Through the implementation of this intelligent management system, the efficiency of standard search, query and use has been a qualitative leap.

2. Analysis of the results of intelligent standardization work

Based on the intelligent practice of standardization management in the implementation process of PLM system, in order to reflect its value and significance, the following statistical analysis and evaluation are made for the improvement of work efficiency brought by this work to standardization engineers.

The statistical analysis and evaluation ideas are as follows: Starting from the standardization of various responsibilities, through the calculation of the proportion of each responsibility's work and the total amount of standardization work, the comparison of the working time after intellectualization and the original working time, the improvement of standardization work efficiency after intellectualization is calculated.

The responsibilities of standardization engineers are mainly divided into the following five areas:

(1) Implement international, national, industrial and enterprise standards;

(2) Collection, collation and publicity of foreign advanced standards, national, industrial and local technical standards, collection, collation and provision of standards and standard information services for technical personnel;

(3) Standardization review of all kinds of technical documents and drawings, process documents and drawings and technical changes;

(4) Prepare (revise) the enterprise technical standards, supervise and inspect the implementation of standards within the company;

(5) Participate in the formulation of international, national and industry standards and the external liaison work related to standardization.

According to the analysis of the above 5 main work contents, according to the author's years of standardization work experience, determine the proportion of each work in all the workload, and improve the proportion of work efficiency after intelligent. Based on the 40h working time of a standardized engineer in a week, the total working time required for the five tasks after intellectualization is 17.8h, the difference between the original working time and 40h, and the saved working time is 22.2h. Compared with the original working time, the overall work efficiency is increased by 55.5%. The specific statistical methods are shown in Table 1 and Figure 1.

Table 1. Improvement of standardization efficiency before and after intellectualization

Figure 1 Comparison of time spent on standardization before and after intellectualization

3 Conclusion

The intelligence of standardization work is a long-term process, because the intelligent management platform system itself does not have the ability to make rules, it is through computer programming will be manually made rules and algorithms solidified in the software, if the standardization work of the enterprise is weak, non-standard, no matter how good the management system will not help. It may even cause companies to lose more than they gain. Therefore, standardization personnel should actively and fully use artificial intelligence means, learn from the successful experience of standardization work at home and abroad, and gradually build the basic database and standard specifications to support digital design, manufacturing, testing, and management, so as to further improve the standardization system of product intelligent management, and lay a solid foundation for enterprises to "Industry 4.0".