A market survey of industrial requirements for product data management and manufacturing planning systems

This paper presents the findings of a systematic investigation, regarding the industrial requirements and current use of product data management (PDM) and computer-aided process planning (CAPP) systems with an emphasis on assembly operations. A pilot investigation was first carried out by sending a questionnaire to a large number of manufacturing companies. Then further investigation was carried out on PDM (through telephone interviews of a selected number of companies) and CAPP (through structured interviews and postal questionnaire with a large enterprise), respectively. The statistic data obtained are processed and analysed.