Simultaneous Engineering

(Available for pro version of IQ Software)

The Simultaneous Engineering tools of the APIS IQ-Software offer several possibilities that let the members of a risk analysis team work independently on a common set of data without the need of additional IT infrastructure or a central database system.

Simultaneous Engineering supports different application scenarios which differ in the amount of information to be shared among the users. Simultaneous Engineering is based on the tried and tested document centered approach of IQ Software.

If all team members are supposed to have unrestricted access to all information in a document, Cloning and Consolidating is the choice solution.

If only pieces of information of a document are to be shared, Collaboration Interfaces should be used.

Cloning and Consolidating

This technology will be used if all team members are allowed unrestricted access to all information in a document. For example, the team members might be responsible for different sub-areas of a larger system, and each member of the team wants to be able to work in these sub-areas while still having access to all other parts of the document.

For every team member, a special type of copy of the master document (a clone) will be created. These clones can then be modified; as the clones are just another type of documents, the usual advantages of the document centered approach still apply. The document can reside on a laptop or be accessible in a company network, it can be sent by email, managed by a document management system and so on.

The master document (or primary document) has a special role in this process. It remembers all clones that were created as well as date and time of the cloning and the receiver of the clone. Also, only the owner of the primary document can consolidate with any of the clones.

Consolidation is a two step process. First the clone is compared with the primary. Any changes found in the comparison step are represented to the user who can then decide what to do with the changes (accept, reject or modify them). In the next step, the differences are applied to the primary document which now contains the union of the changes in the clone and in the primary. By creating a clone after consolidation, the clone owner and the primary owner again have the same data to work with independently.

This approach offers all involved persons the greatest flexibility with minimal administration effort.

Here is a simple scenario as an example. A company develops a product which consists of complex parts. Different people within this company are responsible for the different areas and are supposed to develop a FMEA. It is appropriate to develop a basic structure of the FMEA centrally and then create clone documents which are further developed by the specialized personnel. At a designated point the cloned documents are consolidated with the primary document and all (valid) changes and additions made to the documents are part of the consolidated result document.

Figure 1. Primary document
The original document is supposed to be modified by a minimum of two teams simultaneously.

Figure 2. Changes to the primary document
In the primary document the structure element 'signal cable(complete)' is modified.

Figure 3. Changes to the clone document
In the clone document the structure element 'external systems' is modified.

Figure 4. Editor difference details in the consolidation desktop
Within the consolidation desktop you see the four added structure elements.

Figure 5. Result of consolidation
In the result document the changes made within the clone document and the changes from the primary document are consolidated.

Collaboration Interfaces

This term sums up several custom designed possibilities with two of them being implemented at this point in the IQ Software.

  • Requirement Interfaces manage the process of exchanging requirements between a design FMEA and a process FMEA.
  • Component Interfaces manage the process of exchanging severity specifications for component failures as well as occurrence and detection values between up to three participants

Component Interfaces

A typical situation could be that a company is producing components which are integrated into a product of another company. So the first company is the supplier for the second company. Both companies are doing their FMEA with APIS IQ-Software and can therefore exchange parts of their FMEA structure via Component Interfaces. The supplier includes the relevant structure parts and their failures into a Component Interface Document and sends this document to the customer. The customer integrates the information in the interface document into his own document and provides the necessary information (failure effects for the component failures and their severity). The enhanced interface information can then be sent back to the supplier and consolidated with the current data. This solves the important problem that often a supplier does not know the real severity of his failures because these can only be defined by the customer. Note that both parties (supplier as well as customer) can define the amount of information that is transferred.

Product Characteristics Interfaces

With the Product Characteristics Interfaces product requirements can be transferred from a source document (usually a design FMEA) to a target document (usually a process FMEA). Information concerning requirements can be updated at any time in this direction ('down streaming'), i.e. if changes are made to the requirements in the source document they can be transmitted to the owner of the target document via an interface document. The changes are automatically included in the target document when opening the interface document.