Environment Improvements for a Better Cooperation in Multi-Culture Collaborative mechanical Design

In this paper a real example of a globally distributed collaborative design project is analyzed. Some of the problems identified as a result of this analysis include: 1the lack of a complete design environment prior to the modeling stage, and 2the need for a flexible and intuitive collaborative environment. To address these problems we propose some preliminary research results of task ontology, common to both cultures, in order to provide globally distributed design teams with a personal assistant agent.