Chinese Journal of Computers   Full Text
Title	Data Flow Modeling and Verification in Product Development Process
Authors	LI Wei-Gang1) WANG Wen-Bin2) SHEN Jun-Yi2)
Address	1)(College of Software and Microelectronics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072) 2)(Department of Computer Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049)
Year	2008
Issue	No.10(1804—1813)
Abstract &   Background	Abstract This paper discusses perspectives of data in product development process management, such as data type, data storage mechanism, and data structure. It is shown that data flow modeling and verification is especially important in workflow management system for product development process. Based on the proposed workflow model with arbitrary cycles, this paper proposes a version control based data flow model which meets the need of product development. To describe the data flow intuitionally and efficiently, the authors introduce variable influence table, and develop an algorism for verifying this data flow model. Earlier practices indicate that the approach meets the data management requirements in workflow management system for product development process. Keywords product development process; workflow; data flow model; analysis; verification Background There is less research on data flow modeling and verification in the field of process management. Existing methods to model the data flow in workflow research field are not suitable to product development processes since they do not consider the version control of data in processes, which are very important for the product development yet. In the PDM (Product Data Management) field data flows are investigated, where data are digital documents and their states during their lifecycles. But few concerns are put on the control data and workflow relevant data in PDM. These make workflow management in PDM unsuitable to manage product development processes other than approval flow. Moreover, few researches were done in correctness problem of data flow model in either workflow or PDM field, which is a complex problem when we consider the version of data in the product development processes. This paper proposes a novel approach to model data flow in product development processes, which covers control data, workflow relevant data and workflow application data. All these data can be controlled in version. It also proposes an algorism for verifying this data flow model. At last, it is shown that the results are practicable through an example. The work in this paper is supported by the Science-Technology Project of Shaanxi Province of China and the Special Fund on Information Technology of Xi’an City under grant No.2004k05-G45 and ZX06033 respectively. The name of this project is "Adaptable Business Process Management System". The development processes for complicated mechatronical product are very complex. To coordinate and manage this kind of processes, workflow management system (WfMS) is often introduced. But, traditional WfMS is low in the flexibility of modeling and executing, expressive power of process model, and ability of adapting to the changes. In the project, the authors researched all this key technologies in adaptable business process management system with workflow model with high expressiveness. The data flow modeling and model verification is important issues, and the proposed version control based data flow model can integrate with the drawing document management module of the PDM system, therefore integrating process management with product data management organically.