Information model for the integration of inspection activity in a concurrent engineering framework

The basis of the integration of activities related to the product life cycle is, mainly, the creation of a unique and coherent information model along all the stages in the cycle. Up to date, dimensional inspection activities have not been deeply analysed, possibly due to the fact that, their work influences are smaller than others, such us numerical analysis, materials or numerical control. However, the integration of dimensional inspection is very important for several reasons: the need of specifying the design and planning of the inspection process from the conceptual part design; the increase of use of high speed coordinate measuring machine (CMM) in the production lines; and finally, for the interest of a feedback between data inspection and manufacturing processes. This paper is a detailed proposal of an information model for inspection based on operations for CMM, which represents a consistent structure of the necessary data in an integrated product setting. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.