Application of OLAP to a PDM database for interactive performance evaluation of in-progress product development

• Application of OLAP to a PDM database to evaluate in-progress product development performance.
• A set of key performance indicators (KPIs) for ongoing product development performance evaluation.
• A conceptual multidimensional data model specified by product identifications with associated features.
• An implementation of the model using a commercial OLAP engine, and applied a to a prototype PDM system.
• Evaluation of in-progress performance which is more flexible than existing result-oriented evaluations.

This paper applies online analytic processing (OLAP), a widely accepted database analysis technique, to a product data management (PDM) database to evaluate the performance of in-progress product development. This paper introduces a set of processing key performance indicators (KPIs) that can measure ongoing product development. To convert and analyze operational data in a PDM database with interactive OLAP operations, this study proposes a multidimensional data model specified by product facts with associated dimensions. The model is implemented using a commercial OLAP engine, and applied to a database supported by a prototype PDM system. The OLAP engine allows analysts to interactively evaluate the performance of in-progress product development in a multidimensional data space. This is a far more flexible and efficient approach than other result-oriented static evaluation approaches.