Collaborative Engineering

Abstract

This chapter introduces the importance of information technologies for the integrated product and process development within the framework of manufacturing excellence models. It argues that the success of the interaction between different activities holds on the necessity of an appropriate product data quality. The authors present a description of the evolution of concurrent engineering to extended enterprise collaborative engineering and introduce basic mainstays where computer tools and technologies enabling virtual workgroups will suppose a key element for these environments. The expansion of enterprise architectures using extended and virtual models is possible due to the advances of communication tools and the capabilities of computer-aided tools that heavily depend on the digital product representation. It is expected that focus on the product data quality not only will solve the intrinsic problems related to CAD model structure data exchange but also will simplify the integration of downstream applications in the collaborative engineering design chain.