In the world-wide automobile industry one of the goals is to reduce development time and costs. The complete development and simulation of the manufacturing resources and factories for a new product on a computer is the first step towards achieving this goal. The computer model of the "digital plant" can be used to perform trials and calculations for which expensive physical trials are still needed today. This computer model is created by the combined effort of a number of developers using different Data Creation systems.

Due to the fact that each system defines its own data format the communication process along the computer-aided process chain today is tackled by duplicate data creation, redundant data management and expensive data conversion processes.

In order for the vision of “Digital Plant” to become reality, a neutral representation of the digital plant is needed, which can be processed by all the partners involved irrespective of data creation system used. This is why the car industry has been investing a great deal of time and money in the development and application of the neutral product data description in accordance with ISO 10303 (STEP) for several years.

However, the standardized data model is only one precondition to allow data sharing, exchange and transfer in a heterogeneous data creation systems environment. A common understanding about processes and operations creating and processing product and manufacturing data as well as standardized implementation methods are required in addition.

In addition, an increasing portion of engineering development work is given out by OEMs to suppliers. This requires a stronger integration of processes, information and systems between OEM and supplier. In order to cope with this, various IT solutions were developed during the last years. They can be generally classified into four groups:

Encouraged by the progress made with the digital car vision, automotive companies started to continue this work in the production planning area. Starting with a PDTnet application project between SCANIA and ABB, the Interest Group Digital Plant was initiated.

This paper provides an overview on the factory processes, discusses the data requirements and emphasizes the relevant standards. It also presents a concept how the concept can be brought into praxis.

In a nutshell, the goals of the Interest Group are:

To reach these goals the following approach will be taken: