US 6,959,268 B1Granted

Product catalog for use in a collaborative engineering environment and method for using same

AssigneeLockheed Martin Corporation

InventorsKenneth N. Myers Jr., Galen P. Plunkett, Jennie D. Beckley, Debra Ann Mroczek, Quynh Anh Nguyen

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Abstract

A collaborative engineering environment (CEE) enables the effective capture, management, communication, and exploitation of all product related information to a project team. The systematic employment of this information offers substantial improvements in productivity, cost savings, cycle time reductions, product integrity, and lifetime supportability of the system. Advanced CEE capabilities exploit and leverage the engineering, architectural and technological expertise of enterprise subject matter experts (domain experts) across multiple complex systems development and integration activities. The CEE provides a tightly coupled process automation using reusable product elements for coupling information with engineering processes and ensuring adherence to repeatable and traceable engineering processes. A product catalog provides a single information management point for intrinsic complex product characteristics and facilitates the propagation of that information to engineering teams incorporating the complex product into their system designs. The intrinsic complex product characteristics are augmented with implementation specific information to fully describe the complex product in the system design.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A computer implemented product catalog for use in a web-centric collaborative engineering environment (CEE) for providing an inter-enterprise collaborative mechanism for organizations developing and maintaining complex system products, the CEE providing a federated architecture linking multiple systems and applications together to enable collaboration among enterprise members, comprising:

an object oriented database management system (ODBMS) managing an associative object model for providing a persistent understanding of product and program information, assets and tools available in the enterprise;
a plurality of part objects forming a product catalog, the part objects being defined by the associative object model and stored in the ODBMS, wherein each part object has intrinsic characteristics corresponding to a plurality of default values, the product catalog providing an application independent means for supporting engineering tools through intelligent interfaces;
means for generating part references, where a part reference refers to a corresponding part object in the product catalog, and wherein the part reference has characteristics customized for a project that override or extend the intrinsic characteristics of its corresponding part object;
and
means for linking members of the enterprise with part objects and customized part references via a collaborative engineering environment (CEE), the CEE having a framework for collaboration which provides access control, security, search mechanisms, concurrency control, versioning, information structuring, information mapping and exchange, wherein the information available to each member is information necessary for the member to complete role and team based tasks, and wherein the linking means comprises a plurality of tools, each tool communicating information with the ODBMS.

2 more elements

A method for customizing a product catalog for use by a project in a collaborative engineering environment (CEE) which provides an inter-enterprise collaborative mechanism for organizations developing and maintaining complex system products, and provides a federated architecture linking multiple systems and applications together to enable collaboration among enterprise members, comprising:

generating a product model for the project, wherein the product model defines project related informational elements and their corresponding characteristics, and wherein the project related informational elements may differ based on domain area;
identifying elements (parts) existing in a enterprise-wide product catalog;
customizing the existing parts for the project, by referring to default characteristics of the existing parts and when desired specifying overriding or extending part characteristics unique to the project;
if necessary to fully implement the project product model, providing new parts for the product catalog;
and
integrating the project product model with domain-specific tools and application used by members of the enterprise, thereby enabling collaboration among enterprise members who have immediate access to information stored in the ODBMS by other members, wherein each member performs domain specific tasks using customized tools and applications and stores results of their performed tasks in the ODBMS, thereby allowing access of their information by other members of the enterprise.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 09/666,545Filed 21 Sep 2000 · continuation in part
Priority: 21 Sep 1999
Granted: 25 Oct 2005
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification3 codes

G06Q 10/06
Administration; Management: resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation…
G06Q 10/10
Administration; Management: office automation; Time management
G06Q
Information and communication technology [ict] specially adapted for administrative, commercial, financial, managerial