Final report by EC, UNINOVA and AIDIMA. SMART-fm IST-2001-52224 A standards-compliant framework to support complete integrated product life-cycle information management and electronic commerce for the furniture manufacturing (fm) industry, in the advent of smart enterprises.
Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION...3 1.1. OVERALL VIEW...3 1.2. FINAL REVIEW FOR THE EUROPEAN REGION...3 2. GENERAL ASPECTS... 4 2.1. OVERALL APPRAISAL OF THE STATUS OF THE PROJECT... 4 2.2. PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND CO-OPERATION... 4 3. TASKS AND ACTIVITIES... 4 3.1. THE WAY FORWARD... 4 4. WHAT HAS HAPPENED?... 5 4.1. PLANS FOR DISSEMINATION OF RESULTS... 5 5. RECOMMENDATIONS... 5 6. INTER-REGIONAL FINAL MEETING... 5 7. OTHER POINTS OF SPECIAL INTEREST... 5 SMART-fm Final Report March 2006 Page 2 of 6
1. INTRODUCTION 1.1. Overall view The funstep Interest Group (funstep-ig) targets interoperability among software solutions wherever they are used within a company and/or in different companies. One of the main aims of the industry is to safeguard the investment in information technology, training and data management, making more profitable the investments in computer aided design, electronic commerce, and other related technology. The funstep-ig brings together software vendors, manufacturers, retailers and technology developers in a single forum towards the adoption of common standards for interoperability, focused on SMEs. ISO 10303 is the Standard for the Exchange of Product model data (STEP) developed by ISO TC184/SC4. ISO 10303-236 is the Standard Application Protocol (AP) for the Exchange of Furniture Product Data, including the representation of furniture catalogs, geometry, expressions for special products, and placement of pieces of furniture into an interior decoration project. This ISO standard had its origins and main consensus arena within two funstep CEN/ISSS workshops. These workshops have been a useful tool to get the agreements and achieve the results that have become the lately approved DIS status in the ISO balloting process with 100% of positive votes. Due to this peculiar result, the funstep development team is allowed to skip the next standardisation stage (i.e., FDIS), and reach directly the IS stage, as an ISO International Standard (IS). Therefore, publication of ISO10303-236 as an ISO IS is expected for the beginning of 2006, more than 1 year in advance of the planned schedule. The architecture of ISO 10303-236 follows a modular approach by dividing the entire information model into reusable components, each defined in a separate application module (AM). This approach provides a clearer definition of each part of the model, which simplifies the adoption process for the standard and allows sharing and reusing the information by different APs. Dr. Ricardo Gonçalves, New University of Lisbon UNINOVA (Portugal) is the scientific coordinator of funstep IG and project leader in ISO TC184/SC4 for the development of AP236. Mrs. Maria José Nuñez, AIDIMA (Spain) is the AP236 part editor and she has been coordinating funstep together with Dr. Gonçalves. Resulting from the work developed for ISO1030-236, Ricardo Gonçalves (in year 2003) and Maria José Nuñez (in year 2005) were awarded with the International William J. Conroy Standards Professional Award, established by the US Product Data Association (US PRO) to recognize the leadership in the development and implementation of Product Data Exchange standards. 1.2. Final review for the European region The fifth and final review of the SMART-fm project was held on Thursday 16 June 2005 at the Hotel SIDI Saler Playa el Saler, Valencia, Spain. The review meeting was chaired by Marie Redmond (Trinity College Dublin) substituting for Florent Frederix, European Commission, who was unable to attend the review. The technical project manager, Ricardo Gonçalves, presented a proposed agenda and this was accepted by the reviewers. SMART-fm Final Report March 2006 Page 3 of 6
2. GENERAL ASPECTS 2.1. Overall appraisal of the status of the project This review acknowledges the successful completion of the SMART-fm project..the final review meeting for the European region was held in Valencia to coincide with the meeting of the ISO standards body. Members of the consortium have submitted a draft standard - ISO AP236 - for consideration. 2.2. Project management and co-operation Tension between some of the partners and the inconsistency of the effort expended by some members of the consortium was noted by the administrative manager in the Management and Administration item on the agenda. The project budget has not been allocated according to the effort contributed by the individual partners. The partners who contributed the most effort to this project should be rewarded financially in line with their contributions in the final budget allocation. The DoW and budget were only finalised with the EC last month. Not all partners contributed equally to the work of the project. The total budget has been spent but some partners have not completed their commitments (this is reflected in the deliverables not received to date). Personnel budget has been spent travel costs have been used and in some instances over spent. 3. TASKS AND ACTIVITIES Many significant results were achieved during this final period of the project. The Impact of the Work of the Project on Industry was recorded. In particular, the preparation, submission and hopefully final acceptance of ISO AP236 will have a significant impact on the furniture manufacturing sector worldwide. Another result of the project which will Impact on Industry is the development of Technical Scenarios and Tools. The participants in the work on one scenario were APLICAD and LINIAL SOFT as a Spanish group. They catalogued data and developed tools that facilitated furniture geometry exchange..another integration scenario was developed by Intres and CLAC as an Italian group. An Integrated Industrial Scenario was developed by four participants who were acting independently Webmobili, GPC Arena Furniture, Manufacturing CAD, and Deco CAD. This provides the ability to facilitate two CAD systems for point of sale. The furnishing CAD allows the retailer to draw the plans for the furniture. The Configurator allows the architect to draw the furniture. The advantages of the integration are evident for the Producer and the Retailer. It allows Producers, Retailers, Software and Service Houses and Associations to work together. 3.1. The Way Forward A business plan for funstep community was developed. This examined the market and how this could be influenced and improved by communication. SMART-fm has the objective of improving effectiveness across the entire furniture manufacturing sector and estimates that the impact of accepting and implementing a standard method of classification and information sharing could result in a cost saving of between 11 to 15 per cent. SMART-fm Final Report March 2006 Page 4 of 6
4. WHAT HAS HAPPENED? A major achievement of the project is reaching the enquiry stage for standard submission all the technical work required for the submission is now complete and voting will take place later this year by the national bodies. The development of the standard took longer than the project lifetime. The status of AP236 is that 29 application modules and 6 implementation modules have been developed. The major challenge for the project was to support the preparation of the committee draft and to create consensus for the proposal by demonstrating its applicability in several pilot cases. The draft AP236 standard was submitted for DIS ballot in April 2005. Approved by anonymous consensus. Validation and test case reports were also prepared and submitted to the ISO. To support the ISO submission, SMART-fm has prepared a software suite, which includes conformance testers, AP236 compliant databases, an on-line multi-lingual furniture dictionary, taxonomies, etc. Some webservices have been developed to help the integration of software tools, as for: queries for the dictionary, cataloguing browser, classification of terms, conformance tester of files exchanged. 4.1. Plans for dissemination of results Several industry events were organised by the project. Now there are over 700 members signed up to receive the newsletter. Real business scenarios were developed. A questionnaire was circulated for assessing the results within the consortium and associated partners and contacts. First contacts were made with major companies to adopt AP236. Grange Interiors has adopted the concept and sees the potential business opportunity. AEIM (Spanish association of 160 wood importers providing raw materials to manufacturers) has agreed to adopt the standard. 5. RECOMMENDATIONS The consortium needs to decide how they will continue their work after the funding period has ceased. It is important for the furniture manufacturing and retailing sector that standard terminology be adapted throughout the manufacturing and product life cycles. A business model was presented for funding the continuing work of the funstep interest group; this needs to be developed further. 6. INTER-REGIONAL FINAL MEETING During the ISO TC184/SC4 meeting in Vico-Equense (Italy) the final presentation about results achieved in SMART-fm as a whole was celebrated in the ISC (International Step Centers) meeting, explaining all results achieved. Very good contribution from Australia (as they received some funding) and also from Canada and USA without any funding at all. 7. OTHER POINTS OF SPECIAL INTEREST Testimonials were presented by several industry and standards representatives about the impact of the work initiated by SMART-fm. In particular, the ISO recognises the piloting of the modular model to developing standards and feels this is an example for other standards submissions. SMART-fm Final Report March 2006 Page 5 of 6
A key element of this project was that the technical work was supported by both implementation plans and a broad section of industry involvement which will ultimately help the final adoption and industrial uptake of the standard. The reviewers also noted that the publicity and marketing material leaflets, pens, bags, tee-shirts were of a particularly high standard. SMART-fm Final Report March 2006 Page 6 of 6