Enhanced product modeling beyond description of dependencies

Development of engineering has resulted product development in model space. Product, analysis, production, and other engineering objects are defined, placed in product structure and related by arbitrary relationships. This model is well-proved and serves Internet based every day work of engineer groups in leading industries. The next step is establishment of a more efficient, knowledge and intelligent computer based support of decisions on engineering objects. This development is urged by large and complex models especially where high number of product variants must be handled. In this paper, the authors introduce some new characteristics of their methodology for a possible enhancement of engineering modeling in decisions on engineering objects. In the first sector of this paper, the authors introduce sources for their work and their relevant earlier research results. Following this, a method is introduced for structured description of dependencies among engineering objects and change affect zone (CAZ) is proposed as restricted space for the search of change consequences. Next, a new product model is proposed that consists of current product model, its multilevel structure, and multilevel structure of information based sector of product model. Finally implementation of the proposed model in industrial product lifecycle management (PLM) systems is concluded.