[step-manufacturing] STEP-NC and XML as standard

[Carlsson Per-Arne]

 Dear Mr Hardwick,

I am Per-Arne Carlsson and have been involved in STEP-NC and its evolution since it started as an end user. I work with Virtual Manufacturing in a company at the AB Volvo group.

It takes time to establish a new standard and I am impressed what you and your colleagues have done in the States so far. We are following the work done in the STEP-Manufacturing Team and in the cooperation with BOING, SANDVIK, NIST and KTH where Magnus Lundgren participate. I also participate when I have time, now in the recession there is no time or money any more. I hope it will change soon.

I continuous follow your work and have an ongoing dialog with Magnus.  We work together  to achieve Feature Based Operation Planning based on STEP-NC and standards. This to  achieve  an  efficient work in the plants  with  the  process,  Operation Planning,  Optimized NC-information and  Machine  Balancing ,   witch is very important.

Magnus have made some very good example with the Boxy model and it's STEP-NC  information , showing how information can be extracted from the STEP-NC file that exist today. It means that we are able to manage and store the information in STEP-NC  according to available AP;s  but to access it we need special software to select and present the  selected  information.

STEP-NC is based on XML. There is possibility to extract and transform the information we need for balancing from the STEP-NC file (if the file is following XML-standard)  by using XSLT. It is a way of adapt a specific style sheet on the XML code and also make a transform of the information without specific programming tools etc.  Some example show this ( http://spri.kshell.com/docs/index.xhtml )There are also tools that check the validity of the XML-code (http://www.w3.org/) witch make it usable in any web browser.

>From a end user company we would like to see an evolution of STEP-NC in this open direction so we and other companies can extract and format the information they need from STEP-NC based information files depending on their needs and system.

There  will be an huge market if the STEP-NC file are open as it is today,   the file can  be created  by the different AP  and can carry information supporting many different processes (machining, measure, planning, balancing,  flow simulation etc).
Tomorrows user at the shop floor is today's boys and girls grown up with internet, the web approach is a must if we in any way will have any attention from them.

We are also interested to test and demonstrate how this can be done by standard browsers on a part like Boxy for evaluate operation planning and balancing information with STEP-NC as a information base.


What your view of this?



Best regards / Med vänlig hälsning,
P-A Carlsson
_________________________________________________
Per-Arne Carlsson
Volvo Information Technology AB
Dept 9511, Geo. loc. VAKV-D1
SE-405 08 Gothenburg, Sweden

Telephone: +46 31 32 22 696
Mobile Phone +46 73 90 22 696
E-mail: per-arne.carlsson at volvo.com


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