Platform to support dynamic collaborative design processes in virtual enterprises

Abstract

Collaborative product design favours the identification of innovative solutions as well as enriching the experience of those who participate. Nevertheless, the design and supply chain integration in product development processes is not a trivial task. The main difficulties are related to the different levels of individual expertise amongst team members and to the different organisation of the companies involved. The complex scenario of the extended enterprise triggers research toward the development of efficient methods and tools to support the design teamwork. The present article illustrates an innovative co-design platform which implements an approach to support dynamic collaborative design processes. Starting from the definition of a new design process model integrating different collaborative dimensions, the proposed approach is based on the formalisation of the distributed knowledge in terms of interaction rules and representational models. In particular, the process variability is managed through a new dynamic workflow system able to handle unpredictable events occurring when multiple partners collaborate. Case Based Reasoning algorithms (CBR) are used to manage unexpected events. They support the identification of existing rules in order to reconfigure the workflow. Experimentation is carried out in order to identify the main advantages of the system and also critical issues.

Keywords:

• collaborative processes
• concurrent engineering
• dynamic environments
• virtual enterprises

Acknowledgements

The research reported in this article has been supported by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development and the CO-ENV R&D Consortium.