PLM-enhanced engineering education
Year: 2010
Editor: Boks W; Ion, W; McMahon, C and Parkinson B
Author: Feldhusen, Jörg; Löwer, Manuel; Brezing, Alex; Neis, Jan
Section: LEARNING SPACES AND TECHNOLOGY
Page(s): 598-604
Abstract
As the processing and management of engineering data and workflows have become one of the biggest challenges in industry, a need has emerged for including PDM and PLM (Product Data
management and Product Lifecycle Management) into mechanical engineering programs at universities. This paper describes the concept of PLM education at RWTH Aachen University, entailing a project called ProVerStand (“Produktentwicklung über Verteilte Standorte” - “Product Development Involving Distributed Locations”) initiated by the Chair and Institute for Engineering Design (ikt). The aim of this initiative is to provide universities and similar institutions access to state of the art PLM systems, such as PDMS, CAE and CAD. With the help of governmental funding, the ikt has been able to share its hardware and software implementation with all universities within the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) in Germany at no cost for the participating partners. Since the project’s start in 2002, it has taken proportions that can compete with the biggest industrial-scale applications, featuring 45.000 registered users and continuous software upgrading and migration.
Keywords: PLM education, CAE, PDMS