Modeling Engineering and Manufacturing Activity in Vehicle Development Process

Designing and consequent assembly of a new vehicle is a complex process as it requires close coordination and inputs from a number of disciplines in developing a number of systems and sub-systems in the vehicle that should fit within the confined vehicle space, function and provide the customers an acceptable combination of all relevant vehicle attributes. Understanding how these processes interact and how they are aligned with other while they should support the tasks involved in the conception of a new vehicle at a minimum time and cost. The first step to achieve this goal is the definition of a new UML profile (called VDML, vehicle development modeling language) based on the extension mechanics of UML (industry standard language) to assist business process description and consequent improvements achieved by the high level vision. To show the benefits of this new language applied to this specific business we model the engineer and manufacturing activity process using VDML.