Introduction

Background to PLCS and DEXs

This document provides the Product Breakdown for Support Data Exchange Specification (DEX).

The DEX:

identifies a subset of the ISO 10303-239 "Product Life Cycle Support" [1] information model that is to be used in a given business context;
provides usage guidance for how ISO 10303-239 PLCS is to be used.

OASIS PLCS TC Publications are derived from the content that is developed on DEXLIB. It is important to note that it is the publication that is the subject of standardisation and not DEXLIB. DEXLIB is a development environment for the OASIS PLCS TC.

ISO 10303-239 is part of the ISO 10303 (STEP) set of International Standards for the computer-interpretable representation of product information and for the exchange of product data. The objective of ISO 10303 is to provide a neutral mechanism capable of describing products throughout their life cycle. This mechanism is suitable not only for neutral file exchange, but also as a basis for implementing and sharing product databases, and as a basis for archiving.

ISO 10303-239 PLCS - Product Life Cycle Support specifies an information model that defines what information can be exchanged and represented to support a product through life. Examples of such information are:

information for defining a complex product and its support solution;
information required to maintain a complex product;
information required for through life Configuration Management of a product and its support solution.

This Data Exchange Set (DEX) 1 - Product Breakdown for Support - utilizes ISO/DIS 10303-239:2004 Product data representation and exchange: Application protocol: Product life cycle support (hearafter referred to as PLCS or AP239).

This supports the initiation and progressive development of the Product Breakdown for Support for a particular product, whose design (product structure) is evolving over the product's life cycle.

The viewpoint of the product structure, and hence the Product Breakdown for Support, could be at any point in the product's life cycle. This may be from the design baseline (as-designed view) through to a product baseline (as-designed / as-built / as-maintained view).

The DEX allows you to update the product structure using new versions of exchange data. The DEX also provides the capability to create and populate 'placeholders' within a structure to hold or point to reference data.

Structure of the DEX

The DEX comprises the following sections:

Terms provides a definition of terms used in this DEX;
Scope outlines the scope of the information covered by the DEX;
ISO 10303-239 Activity Model uses the ISO 10303-239 Activity model to illustrate the business activities that are supported by the DEX;
Business Overview provides a high level overview of the business process / application that this DEX is intended to support;
Information Overview provides a high level overview of the business information that can be represented by this DEX;
Information Requirements provides a more detailed overview of the information that the business process / application described in Business Overview requires;
ISO 10303-239 Representation provides technical details of how the business information requirements identified in Information Requirements are represented in using ISO 10303 239 PLCS;
Templates lists all the templates that are used in the definition of this DEX;
Capabilities lists all the capabilities that provide usage guidance for this DEX;
Schemas identifies the information models that define the DEX, namely:
- The EXPRESS [2], product_breakdown_for_support.exp ( HTML view) model for the DEX;
- The XML Schema for the DEX derived from the EXPRESS according to ISO 10303-28 [4] edition 2.
Reference Data lists the reference data classes used by this DEX;
Conformance defines the requirements for applications to conform to this DEX.

Supporting Material

PLCS Help and Information Pages.