Integration-based cooperation in concurrent engineering

Concurrent engineering is a means to shorten product development times. Information systems supporting concurrent engineering must facilitate the exchange and unambiguous interpretation of product data from various design and manufacturing stages, the collaboration of geographically dispersed experts in a complex design process, and the use of diverse computing platforms and tools. We describe our experiences in a joint project with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, building an integrated information system for concurrent engineering applications. The system is based on a single, integrated object-oriented data model and schema, the so-called product and production model, which covers all phases of the product life cycle. The model is implemented in a distributed and heterogeneous fashion using a CORBA-based object bus. On top of this bus, support for structured and ad-hoc collaboration is built around a uniform and flexible presentation layer. We motivate concurrent engineering and argue why we believe that it mandates a single, integrated schema. We then describe the overall architecture of the system and address various implementation issues, in particular object persistence, model evolution, presentation services and support for collaborative work.