PLM-MES integration to support collaborative design

In order to deal with global competition, manufacturers have to develop innovative, sustainable, high added-value, high quality products. Cooperation among companies is necessary to share product development capabilities, costs and potential risks. Information systems such as PLM, ERP and MES must be deployed and reciprocally integrated to improve the efficacy of this collaboration. In this paper, we focus on PLM-MES cooperation: the former system manages relevant product information to meet client specifications; the latter analyzes real-time data collected at the shop-floor (e.g. through a set of sensors installed on the machines) and extracts useful data concerning the “as-is” state of the process or product. The information generated by MES can be used as a feedback to redesign or revise manufacturing operations, in order to enhance the quality of the product and the performance of the production process. This experience-driven knowledge must be integrated in the PLM, to be available for future production, even in different places or for cooperating companies. In this paper, we show an application in the field of aeronautics, in which produced parts must meet very high quality.