Establishment of Credibility in the STEP community
Establishment of STEP Resource Repository
Training Materials Development Phase
The CATT (Computer Aided Technology Transfer) Program was started at OSU (Oklahoma State University) in 1995 as an attempt to assist SME’s (Small and Medium Sized Manufacturers). The STEP (Standard for Exchange of Product Model Data) Project is one of the research projects within the CATT Program to help SME's in their technology acquisition efforts. The main purpose of the STEP project is to develop a team which develops a basic understanding of the ISO 10303 (STEP) standard which will enable them to formulate a training program for SME's on the concept, use, benefits, and drawbacks of STEP.
Thus, this paper is targeted at the decision making body of the SME’s who has had very little exposure to STEP and would like to know more about the STEP standards activities of the research team at OSU.
CATT (Computer Aided Technology Transfer) is a DLA (Defense Logistics Agency) funded program designed to build model civilian infrastructure of electronic information networks, computer-assisted manufacturing capabilities, and a highly trained work force in Oklahoma and after testing the model transport it to other regions of the country.
The research partnership consists of Oklahoma State University, the Defense Logistics Agency, Tinker Air Force Base, Vocational-technical Education Centers, Oklahoma Small and Medium-Sized Businesses, and Aerospace and Engineering firms. Its objective is to accelerate the development and deployment of information and manufacturing technologies that are vital to military preparedness and economic development.
STEP standards are primarily implemented for the exchange of product model data between two seemingly incompatible computer systems. This helps vendors, manufacturers and customers to do business with each other in a much better way which is beneficial for all the parties involved. Thus, STEP is included in the CATT Program domain to assist the SME’s in Oklahoma to do much improved business with each other, and more specifically with the government using electronic commerce and electronic data interface capabilities.
STEP- the unofficial name for ISO 10303 "Industrial Automation Systems-Product Data Representation and Exchange", is defined as "A complete unambiguous, neutral, computer interpretable definition of the physical and functional characteristics of a product through its complete life cycle."
The need for implementing of any type of standard that supports exchange or sharing of data arises to solve the problem of incompatibilities between computer systems. More specifically the need for standards such as STEP results from the use of proprietary software format with "closed data" i.e. the data created using a system from one supplier is not directly accessible or usable by systems from other suppliers.
STEP (ISO 10303), is a set of internationally accepted standards primarily implemented for exchange of product model data throughout its life cycle. There are many organizations and a few academic institutions worldwide that are actively involved in the research for STEP standards. The organization bodies are mainly divided into two categories:
STEP Development Bodies: such as ISO TC 184/SC 4, IPO (IGES/PDES Organization) PDT solutions, SCRA (South Carolina Research Agency), EuroStep, AutoStep.
These bodies develop and edit the STEP standards required for various industries such as the aerospace, automotive, shipbuilding etc.
STEP Implementation Bodies: include STEP Tools, PDIT, PDT solutions, NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), PDES Inc.
The main role of these STEP implementation bodies is to help the interested organizations in implementing the relevant STEP standards by providing them with the necessary resources and knowledge.
Among the academic institutions primarily involved in STEP standards are RPI, Georgia Tech, and the Oklahoma State University. This is not a complete list but just a representative list of organizations/institutions involved in STEP standards.
Thus, as seen here, there has been a worldwide participation of a large number of diverse industrial organizations as well as academic institutions in STEP. This list is going to be ever increasing, as the global business competition becomes more fierce and as responsiveness to changing market demands becomes a major competitive weapon. This increase in STEP usage will accelerate, and this acceleration will force the small and medium sized manufacturers to become familiar with and incorporate STEP into their capabilities/services.
As the CATT program's objective is to assist manufacturers in their improving their technology, and STEP is an emerging technology which will even impact small business operations, this research effort seeks to build an understanding of the STEP technology at a neutral site (OSU) and define a training approach which can be developed, implemented and tested at the small and medium sized suppliers of replacement parts to the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center (OKC-ALC) and, upon successful demonstration of the training program, extend the program into a national training effort.
While a large technology development effort has enabled STEP technology used by small and medium sized manufacturers, these manufacturers have not adopted the new technology as they do not understand the benefits of the technology nor have they been trained in its use. Additionally, small and medium sized manufacturers have been skeptical of the technology developed for large manufacturing concerns. They do not have a source of low/no cost training from a non-developer of the technology. Some of the more general impediments that have kept the SME’s away from adopting the STEP standards are listed below:
Thus, in essence the main goal of the STEP research team at OSU is to develop STEP training modules for SME's in an attempt to explain the STEP standards, their use, benefits and drawbacks.
The main purpose of this phase was to get conversant with PDES and the STEP standards and their use and application in small and medium sized enterprises. The awareness phase, as the name implies, focused on gaining a basic understanding on the part of the team members on STEP standards and the various STEP related activities in other organizations/institutions throughout the world. Furthermore, the goal was to have individual team members develop expertise in specific research areas such as Express, MANDATE, Pro/Engineer etc. This was all done to enable the team to make Oklahoma’s SME's and the CATT team STEP literate and capable of disseminating information about STEP.
In order for the team, to establish a basic competency and knowledge in the STEP standards a broad spectrum of activities and means were adopted. Also, as an end to the means, STEP literature was to be collected and distributed to the team. In addition, individual study and expertise based on individual study was developed and oral summaries of each team member’s findings were presented to the group, followed by discussions, comments and suggestions.
An activity of this phase was a source of seminars by outside speakers so that the team would get acquainted with the STEP and related activities around the globe. Speakers such as Bill Gruttke from Northrop Grumman, Ron Stauffer from Excel Management Systems, Torbjorn Holm (EuroSTEP), Julian Fowler, the PDT Solutions head, Rick Bsharah of Ford Motor Co., Mike Pratt from NIST visited Oklahoma State University to deliver seminars from September through December 1998. Bill Gruttke gave an overview of STEP and the standards process, while Ron Stauffer talked about the standards community, various STEP translators in use. Torbjorn Holm emphasized more on STEP standards being implemented at Volvo and the STEP infrastructure. Julian Fowler spoke about STEP from the European perspective and its applications in oil and gas industries. Mike Pratt gave a brief overview about NIST’s role in the standards process and about the different STEP tools in use.
Along with these formal presentations, informal discussions were undertaken with each of the outside speakers. The purpose of these discussions was to get to know each speaker’s perspective on STEP activities throughout the world and to provide the suggestions for further OSU activities. The most noteworthy thing that the speakers mentioned that there was relatively less active involvement in development and implementation of STEP standards by the U.S. universities as compared to those in Europe. All the speakers unanimously felt that OSU should become active in STEP and/or other standards development activities in order to gain the breadth of understanding necessary to credibly develop and deliver STEP training to small and medium sized manufacturers. They also advised the team members to increase their participation in STEP meetings and visit STEP centers and form strategic alliances with other organizations heavily involved in the STEP work. In addition to the above listed external speakers, informal discussions were held with other team members and others were contacted by Emails, phone etc.
Also, each member of the research group at OSU formally presented an aspect of their individual research area. Dr. Tom Warren gave a formal presentation on SGML, while Mark Lobo gave a summary of the CALS conference, which he attended in Orlando, Florida. Salil Pradhan briefed the group about the MANDATE project, while Jayesh Ravat spoke about STEP application Protocol Implementation Report. Florita Sheldon gave a presentation on SGML usage and Mark Brookes described his activities related to the development of the OSU STEP web page.
These presentations, along with the team's own research work built a foundation of understanding of STEP and covered all topics anticipated in the project proposal. To further bolster the research efforts other activities were also carried out which included discussions on various Application Protocols, as well as discussion on Integrated Resources, ARM's, AIMs, and STEP architecture.
Establishment of Credibility in the STEP community
As a result of the seminar series, the CATT program at OSU is now known to many of the tag players in the STEP community as a valuable newcomer in the standards community. This will allow the CATT program and its sponsor, DLA, an additional avenue into the STEP community and enhance its ability to not only to use the developed standards but to contribute and incorporate its needs and concepts into the standards as they are being developed. The STEP research team at OSU succeeded in becoming the member of USPRO (U.S. Product Data Association). Also, as a result of the contacts made, Dr. Tom Warren was asked to join an SC4 Documentation Review Team by Julian Fowler, a STEP project convenor.
Establishment of STEP Resource Repository
The team developed a library of STEP resources as a consequence of its directed study efforts and the seminar series. Copies of books, periodical articles, web materials and sites, as well as STEP software such as shareware, STEP tools, CAD tools-IDEAS by SDRC and various translators, videotapes of presentations by outside speakers for use in further research work are available. Some of the books that are included in the STEP resource repository are as follows:
Creating such a repository helped the team to search and accumulate various research articles on a wide variety of STEP relevant topics. The team can always refer to these articles, books, tools for their future research endeavors. Also, this repository can be made accessible to outside personnel such as the SME’s who are interested in knowing and implementing STEP standards.
Establishment of Cross-Organization STEP Team
The STEP series brought together members of the OSU, Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, TASC, and SBIRE and helped establish additional team cohesion and project participation. This helped the research team in establishing contacts with external industry personnel and also get to know their perspectives on STEP related issues.
Establishment of OSU-STEP Web Site
One of the team members, Mark Brookes, succeeded in establishing a web site (http://www.okstate.edu/ind-engr/step/), which includes the information about the team members and their research areas, STEP activities at OSU and links to numerous other STEP relevant sites. This was done mainly for the external sources to get to know about the STEP activities being carried out at OSU and establish contacts with the STEP research team at OSU for acquiring some training and expert advice.
Training Materials Development Phase
The main aim of this phase is to develop materials for a STEP training program for the small and medium sized manufacturers based upon the understanding and the competency established during the awareness phase. The training program will be flexible enough to include all the manufacturers, from the more naive firms to the more sophisticated technology users. Also, while developing this training program the team always keeps in mind that the companies have little or no resources and knowledge to implement STEP standards.
Finally, the main activities that will be carried out during this phase, are development of individual training modules, which will include writing and publishing papers in academic journals, presentation slides, web site management, etc.
As mentioned before the main activities that will be carried out in the phase, will be developing training modules that consist of writing and publishing papers in academic journals, preparing presentation slides from the contents of those papers, introducing the published material in the OSU STEP web page and developing training manuals for the SME's. Some of the titles of the training modules being developed by the individual team members are Introduction to STEP, CATT Efforts at OSU, ISO standards development process and the IE, Industrial Benefits of STEP, Impediments to the Implementation of STEP by SME's.
Attending Meetings/Conferences
Dr. Nazemetz and Dr. Warren attended the IPO (IGES/PDES Organization) conference at Orlando in the first week of February 1998. During the conference, both of them attended various sessions on MANDATE, Quality Control, CALS, Express-X, Life-cycle support etc. Also, one or two representatives of the STEP research team at OSU are expected to attend the ISO meeting in Bad Aibling (Germany) in June 1998. This has and will contribute in establishing a much-coveted credibility for the STEP research team at OSU among the major developers and implementers in the STEP world.
In conclusion, this project has succeeded in:
The different aspects of the STEP standards that the team learned after carrying out the various activities are as follows:
Thus, at the end of the training phase it is anticipated that OSU will have build and formulated STEP training modules for SME's to be used in their data exchange and technology transfer programs. This will not only help the SME’s to become competitive in the ever expanding global marketplace but also assist them locally, to do better and more efficient business transactions with the U.S. government agencies.
