Functional model for the development of an inspection integration framework

Product dimensional inspection is set as one of the essential parts of the production process, where not only product quality test is checked but also its interaction with other development stages in a minimal time. This enables a feedback to make quicker production and design decisions, provides updated information about the inspection processes to be shared and used in the new development processes, and permits the simultaneous work in the preparation of the inspection processes themselves. For this aim, it is necessary, as it occurs in the STEP framework, to develop an application context that includes all dimensional inspection aspects, from the geometrical and measurement aspects to those related to administration and configuration product data. This paper proposes a solution to integrate the dimensional inspection process with coordinate measuring machines with the design and manufacturing processes. Integration is achieved through a common product information model. A functional information model, a reference information model and an interpreted information model have been defined. The interaction with other information models associated to other activities of the production cycle is possible. Tests have been made of the possibility of making the inspection information interchange at the operation level instead of making it at the CMM trajectory level, as it is the case of the current DMIS format. This level of information definition is easier to put into effect, easier to interpret, and it is more productive. In order to test the validity of the information model, a real work environment which has been called IFCIA (Inspection Framework for Concurrent Information Access) has been developed. The IFCIA architecture is composed of a product modelling system, an object-oriented central database and a tri-dimensional coordinate measuring machine. The model has been implemented on an object-oriented product central database which is accessible by all the applications, so that the access to data is achieved in a concurrent way and in real time for the different agents involved in the development cycle, in a heterogeneous framework of platforms and applications. The generation and transference of the information among these systems are carried out exclusively according to data structures defined in the information model. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.