Cooperative and Integration Mechanisms in Collaborative Product Development

In product development companies, an important progress is the extensive development and deployment of collaborative design and manufacturing methodologies and systems, further to form a Collaborative Product Development (CPD) environment. It is in line with the growing trend of global cooperative design and outsourcing in product development. In a CPD environment, people are able to participate in intra-/inter-enterprise or even global product development chains, and to collaborate with each other and overseas partners to pursue competitive advantages. Collaboration and integration are two key research issues, and the development of effective mechanisms is crucial for a successful CPD environment. In this paper, developed collaborative and integration mechanisms are discussed. The collaborative mechanisms are summarized from the perspectives of collaborator awareness, negotiation and conflict management, collaborative decision-making, development process management (e.g., workflow management, design change management and review management), team management, etc. The integration mechanisms are investigated from a data-centric integration level, which combine modern markup and Internet-compatible language and product exchange standards, and a service-centric integration level, in which services are developed to build up a dynamic CPD environment. In the end, some future trends are discussed.