Information infrastructure of engineering collaboration in a distributed virtual enterprise

Engineering design is a central theme of many engineering projects. Engineering design targets a wide range of engineering artefacts, such as products and production systems, and involves many kinds of engineering activities that must collaborate to accomplish the common mission of an engineering project. This collaboration process depends heavily on information from many different sources that represent fragments of engineering data in many different forms. This paper presents a theoretical approach to engineering collaboration in the process of designing production systems. The paper presents an information infrastructure that supports engineering collaboration by integrating various kinds of information (e.g. design data and knowledge) and activities (e.g. system modelling, generation of design alternatives, design validation, and decision making). A rigorous process of engineering collaboration is proposed. An information model of production systems is outlined for integrating information and activities at four levels of abstraction. The information infrastructure can be used to promote engineering collaboration in a distributed virtual enterprise, improve current practice of system design, and facilitate the development of information environment for engineering collaboration.