Global collaborative engineering environment for integrated product development

Globalization has created a situation of increased international competition, which has put companies under enormous pressure in order to sustain and improve their value added to customers based on mass customization and time-to-market opportunities. This has led to more international collaboration within companies and their different facilities worldwide, or among different companies in global supply chains. In this scenario the tasks of design and manufacturing of products are being executed by different facilities of one large company or by a diversity of companies, usually at different geographical locations. To support all the product life cycle activities, modelling tools and computer applications have been created. During this research project a global collaborative engineering environment and web-based applications have been developed to demonstrate how virtual collaborative product development can be achieved and a case study is presented to demonstrate how collaborative design for high-tech products can be undertaken.