By giving you, as an explorer of Isene PDM Home, a story telling the evolution at Volvo regarding PDM and Bill of Material, I hope this will give you an understanding of what PDM is about.

I started working at Volvo fall 1958, so that is a practical point in time to start.

Volvo was at that time one single company consisting of different departments. It was about 10 years later that Volvo was divided in different companies within the Volvo Group.

Volvo trucks were developed at the "truck drawing office" that would be called Truck Engineering today. The same office were also developing bus chassis.

What was developed was drawings and part lists. Even at that time the Bill of Material (BoM) were separated from the Drawings. That had happened in about 1939 after a trip to General Motors and other automotive manufacturers in USA by the executives of Volvo.

Based on the Parts Lists, the manufacturing Engineering industrialized the Products engineered by the "truck drawing office". Between the "truck drawing office" and manufacturing there was a release department that took care of adapting the released Product to manufacturing ability and communicated back to the "drawing office" needs for changes before the Product could start being manufactured.

Earlier, before the second world war, most companies relied on drawings only. The drawings carried the Bill of Materiel in a corner. Installation drawings carried all parts necessary to manufacture the Product- An installation drawing could consist of several sheets of which some listed the parts necessary for the installation specified on that drawing.

In the early 60-ies, Volvo started to get computerized, starting with manufacturing at the truck plant and the car plant and of course economy. Powerful IBM machines were installed (IBM 1401 and 7070).
In 1967 Volvo decided to "computerize the Parts Lists" and the TI project was launched with the Vice President Engineering Tord Lidmalm as top gun. The TI project was soon sucked into the bigger VIS (Volvo Information System) Project that consisted of 20 sub-projects.
We were 4 people making the core of the TI project, 2 with user background and 2 with computer background. Lots of people were added later when programming started and when migration were needed to get the application up and running.

In 1969 we were ready to start the migration to the new system "KD69". It was based on an IBM program called the BOMP (Bill of Material Processor) and was in fact the only application that was installed of the entire VIS Project.
KD69 was updated using a lot of different forms. Engineers were filling in these forms which were sent to a group that scrutinized the forms and made corrections and additions etc. after which digital capture was made on tape encoders (instead of on punch cards). The tapes were sent to the computer centre and run during night. The next morning we had a lot of output including error lists that had to be taken care of : new forms, new tape encoding and new computer run etc. But this was regarded as very modern and rational.

Just after we had installed the KD69 IBM released their IMS (Information Management System). Volvo had participated in the Beta tests of this. IMS incorporated data bases and it also had the possibility to use CRT terminals for data retrieval and for input.

KD69 had only paper for input and for output. Parts Lists were produced by KD69 in large quantities and had to be copied in even larger quantities. You had to keep track of revisions of the Part Lists to be sure you hade the right ones.

It soon became evident that it was possible to have real time applications where you always had the latest version and all previous engineering changes available when needed.
At Volvo Trucks, KOLA was the next project moving KD69 to a next level. It started slowly in 1972 but gained speed in 1976 and was installed in 1980. Migration was painful since it had to be done manual.
KOLA was reengineered in 1997 and is now the PDM application used throughout Volvo Trucks, Volvo Buses and Volvo Penta.
At Volvo Cars, KDP was the application developed as a major enhancement of KD69. It was installed in 1981 and has been further developed several times since then. It has also been replaced to a certain degree but is still running.
Volvo BM in Eskilstuna had been purchased by Volvo in the early 50-ies. In the early 70-ies a new application had been developed based on KD69 and IMS.

In 1978 Volvo BM decided that they need something better and the MF80 Project was launched. Within that project, the PROST project was started in January 1979. KOLA was investigated as a possible application but it was rejected as being too complicated. Instead, the PROST project developed a similar application based in requirements specified within Volvo BM. First installation was done in March 1982 and the last installation in May 1984 when also the migration was done, in one blow, in a mechanized way.

In 1979 it was also decided that Volvo BM should be restructured: no more tractors or harvesters and no more foresting machines. Volvo BM should become a manufacturer of Construction Machines. Volvo BM already had Wheel Loaders, Articulated Dumpers, Back-hoe Loaders and Graders.

PROST was a Swedish application intended for Swedish companies only. However, as soon as PROST was up and running, there was a demand for Parts Lists in English. This was foreseen in the PROST project , so that was an easy requirement to fulfil.

In 1986 Volvo BM joined Clark Michigan and a new company was formed VME (Volvo Michigan Euclid) only 50% owned by the Volvo Group. PROST became the general PDM application with users even in USA. New companies were purchased: Zettelmeyer in Germany and Pel-Job in France. The company name, VME, was kept but now the acronym didn’t mean anything. The excavator company of Samsung in Korea was purchased in 1996 and the company name was altered again to Volvo Construction Equipment. Other companies have been purchased since then.

Since 1984, PROST has been continuously enhanced to meet the requirements as Volvo BM grew to a complete group of manufacturers located all around the world.

• PROST is capable of documenting Products from early project start and all the way through stages of development until release. PROST can also document engineering changes from start till release. It is also possible to back out a released change as long as it is not yet effected into manufacturing.
• PROST has several the capability to show two different views of the Product Structure and a "2½ level" where-used inquiry.
• PROST has a full record of the Product life cycle history including all engineering changes.
• Relations to drawings are also covered even if there is no real integration.
• Updating and maintenance of data is managed directly by the product engineers themselves via 3270 terminals or as present: 3270 emulation on PC.

The number of users is still above 2500 with around 5 million transactions per year.

In 1995 we had started to look for a replacement for PROST. It had become evident that there would be a need for integration between CAD and PDM. Still we have no integration between the two application worlds. At the start of CAD in 1985 there was no need: few drawings on CAD and even fewer geometric models. 10 years had made a great difference. Also, the Products had become more complicated and required a handling of Options that PROST was not really capable of.

PROST is not necessarily due for replacement but it is absolutely in need of a major overhaul and enhancement. IBM IMS is still a very good base for further development. However, it seems like executives prefer an "out-of-the-box"-solution from a major PDM vendor using a later and "modern" technique. A possible solution to-day is actually KOLA – again!

A PDM application has to be very versatile and flexible. It has to live through growth with new companies being added as purchased or as partners. It also has to be able to cope with sold companies where it has to be possible to extract all the information related to the sold company. Not always easy! Volvo BM had to do this when the tractor business were sold to Valmet. Volvo CE had to do this when Euclid were sold to Hitachi.

This little story out of the real life tells quite a lot about which requirements that have to be fulfilled by a good PDM application. It has to be able to cope with a dynamic environment – the extended enterprise developing and manufacturing complex mechatronic products in a very global world:

Develop anywhere and manufacture anywhere else is a must! 

It is quite obvious that there just isn’t any PDM applications "out-of-a-box" that can meet the requirements at an industry that started development of PDM applications in 1967 and have hade most of the functions for many years that to-day’s PDM vendors offer as new and modern. - - -or even, the application offered do not have some of the useful functions we are used to have. 

A possible evolution for PROST and other lecacy apps?