Web-based Information Models to Support Product Development in Virtual Enterprises

Abstract

Two information models have been defined to be key elements to support product development, namely, product and manufacturing models. The product model contains all data related to a product's life cycle. The manufacturing model describes the capabilities and capacities of manufacturing facilities. The objective of these two information models is to assist simultaneous design teams by providing access to consistent sources of product and manufacturing information, and therefore allow computer applications to be developed to support concurrent design. In a virtual enterprise, product development has to be carried out by distributed teams of different companies, therefore there is a need for these two models to be available in an environment which can be shared regardless where the teams are located. The use of Web technology has been defined to be useful to share product information and manufacturing technical capabilities among global companies. A product and manufacturing models have been developed in prototype systems based on an object oriented database using Web technology to support the following application system: design for injection moulding and selection of suppliers for product development in a virtual enterprise