Document dynamic management technology oriented to product development process

The dynamic and repetitive natures of design process demand effective management and control of the changing process of documents during product development. The technologies of document organization and storage, document version control, and process-lifecycle loose coupling interplayed mode were proposed to manage the dynamic evolution of documents. A document was defined as the logical unit composed of multiple files to describe the same product, which was organized by cabinet, product or lifecycle states to achieve collaboration and information sharing among designers. By the tree version model and the version control mechanism imbedded in cabinet, the design history of document could be preserved and controlled. The loosely coupled process and lifecycle model were integrated by tasks and were interplayed to drive the transition of document lifecycle states. Based on the proposed theory and technologies, the object model has been constructed, and a Product Data Management (PDM) system has been developed.