Complex adaptive models for the integration of product centered engineering

Classical problem in engineering modeling is that product changes and environmental effects on product are hard to propagate in the product model during engineering activities for the lifecycle of products. In order to support change handling, product modeling in current product lifecycle management (PLM) system uses feature and contextual connection definitions to realize self-adaptive characteristics of product model. Actual problems with this model are identified and recent contributions to establish new modeling solutions are introduced in this paper. The main objectives are to enhance self adaptive characteristics of currently applied product models and to extend contextual connections to new features providing higher level knowledge representation capability. Open architecture PLM system representing latest product modeling principles and methods is considered as environment for the research, simulation, and implementation demanded by the proposed extension using new features and contexts.