A STUDY ON TELE-COLLABORATIVE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

The tele-collaborative product development (TeleCo-PD) is an important technology for modern enterprises to win in the 21st century global market. It concerns how to utilize distributed product development resources to design and manufacture a new product. This paper presents a series of tools developed to construct a TeleCo-PD platform, which provides small and middle size enterprises with the ability to collaborate with each other. The proposed platform is based on an Integrated Service Digital Network (ISDN), with a Client/Server based process management system for defining and assigning tasks, a whiteboard for sharing engineering drawings, and a File Transfer Protocol server for transferring product data files. The platform has been deployed in a virtual enterprise in developing a new digital camera.