Engineering Information Management Systems: Beyond Cad/Cam to Concurrent Engineering Support (Automation in Manufacturing)

Rating:
Summary: Good book from a PLM thought-leader
Review: I found this book after reading Stark's Product Lifecycle Management book published in 2004, 13 years after this one. For me Stark's PLM book puts him up there as a leader among the PLM thoughtleaders and a principal visionary of PLM. I wanted to check out how accurate some of his preceding writings would be ten years on. In Engineering Information Management Systems he is writing mainly about Product Data Management software and workflow in the product development area. The book is clear, detailed, complete and useful nearly fifteen years after it was published. He had a clear view of what those systems could do a long time before they became a commonplace. On that basis the ideas in his PLM book could still be with us in 2020. A 2020 vision of PLM. I recommend reading this book. The basic facts are as relevant now as they were when published in 1992.

Rating:
Summary: Good early book about EDM and PDM
Review: This is an old book dating from the late nineteen eighties, but has very good descriptions of the needs and reasons for edm systems (engineering data management systems, engineering document management systems, engineering drawing management systems.) As well as the needs and reasons, there are excellent descriptions of the functionality of these systems, and examples of them. The author also explains nicely how to do an implementation project. There are more recent books about product data management (Burden, Product Data Management) and product lifecycle management (Stark, Product Lifecycle Management: Paradigm for 21st Century Product Realisation) but this one is very good value for money, is a classic in the field, has a good description of the basics, and is one of the first to relate product data management to application systems like cad/cam and to working methods like concurrent engineering, and I recommend reading it.