An Internet-Based System Architecture for Collaborative Product Development

This paper proposes an Internet-based solution to facilitate Collaborative Product Development (CPD) in manufacturing enterprises. In the proposed system architecture, an Internet-based collaborative platform provides all participants with basic facilities, including collaboration services and database services. At the middle layer of the architecture, four modules, namely, RCM-based (Result-Chain based Modeling) process management, product structure management, Virtual Reality, and multimedia conference, work together to support collaborations between participating and no-participating users. Detailed implementation issues are addressed and future work is discussed.