Support of product design processes flexibility in PLM systems using a service‐based approach

Industrial companies collaborating to develop new products need to implement an effective management of their design processes and product information. Unfortunately, PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) systems, which are dedicated to support product design activities, are not efficient as it might be expected. Indeed, product design processes are continuously changing, are sometimes emergent and non deterministic whereas PLM systems, based on workflow technology, don't support process flexibility. Needs in terms of process support flexibility is necessary to facilitate the coupling with the business enactment. Furthermore, Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) enhances flexibility and adaptability of composed solutions. Systems based on SOA have the ability to inherently being evolvable. This paper proposes an approach to deal with product design process flexibility in PLM systems by making profiles from SOA. The objective is to specify, design and implement product design processes in a very flexible way so that business changes are rapidly considered in PLM solutions.