PLM Interoperability: the ASD SSC Radar chart

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The ASD Strategic Standardisation Group (SSG)

The Strategic Standardisation Group (SSG) was set up in October 2008 by AeroSpace & Defense industry association of Europe (ASD), with the support of a group of European manufacturers and defence agencies in order to share a common strategy for the development and deployment of interoperability solutions all along the product life-cycle.

The SSG is a working group of the ASD association, reporting to the ASD Services Commission. Interoperability of information processes is seen as key for both industrial performance and operational performance of aerospace and defence (A&D) products. SSC approach to interoperability is based on the broad adoption of standards, not on the selection of a particular technology or tool. 

The ASD SSG aims to support effective governance, at European level, of the development and validation of information interoperability standards and solutions for A&D industries: 

• Identifying and specifying A&D industry needs in regards to information interoperability along the product life-cycle.
• Proposing and applying governance tools at strategic and technical level (e.g. radar screen, interoperability framework, assessment process).
• Developing ASD standards policies and recommendations and publishing these through the SSG website.
• Encouraging IT vendors to implement these solutions and assessing the quality of those implementations.
• Developing a network of experts.
• Developing liaisons with all relevant associations (e.g. AIA in the U.S.) and standardisation organisations (e.g. ISO/TC 184/SC 4, OMG, UN/CEFACT).

ASD SSG Radar chart

Radar chart aims at:

1. monitoring the appropriate level of effort of the ASD in the development, development or monitoring of ASD external and internal standards
2. identifying the level of support of the standard by ASD, being potential candidate, candidate or adopted standards (recommended by the SSG)

The Radar Screen is a graphical representation of relevant standards (represented as radar blips) on the global radar screen, plus a description of each blip.

Why it is important

When establishing PLM interoperability based on the usage of open standards for the networked organisations working on a complex product, we aim at preparing (strategy) and build (architecture) the operational interoperability of a complex system of systems. PLM standards are not to be considered as technologies, but as strategic protocols the members of the network must agree on if willing to succeed.

If you want to know more about ASD SSG Radar Chart, let's have a look at the ASD SSG web site.

The PLM architectural framework has been developed combining usage of numerous research projects and of harmonised industrial practices, which are today converging through the establishment of the New STEP Architecture.

The goal of the new STEP architecture project is to answer to the increasing needs of the industries, governmental agencies and PLM vendors / integrators to use a set of efficient and consistent international standards for product and process information interoperability.

The following figures shows first planned deployments of the results of the “new” STEP architecture:

SIP and IMAGINE research projects, described in my previous posts, contributed by proposing Interoperability testing methodology and platform in order assessing ASD SSC Radar Chart standards and their implementation for insuring secured collaboration within a Dynamic Manufacturing Network.

With emerging technologies such as IoT and Blockchains, and due to emerging usage of digital twins and digital threads for Virtual Manufacturing, it is important integrating the most relevant Manufacturing standards within the ASD SSG radar chart, in order to prepare and to build the operational interoperability of the PLM of the future.

Let's follow.