A distributed change control workflow for collaborative design network

Collaborative product development is becoming more valuable because of the increasing coordination and management complexity of organizational information, responsibilities, schedules, deliverables, product information, and business process. As outsourcing and globalization increase the number of design chain participants, a collaborative product development speeds up the decision-making of trusted partners, employees, suppliers, and customers in design chains. Due to continuous changes in design projects, delays in product developments are common. Thus, a change control workflow is needed among design chain participants for product development. A distributed change control workflow for design network is therefore proposed in this study. This type of workflow is a two-layer approach derived from the principles of configuration management and routing algorithm. It has been validated that the consistencies of designs from each participants in design chain is maintained by applying the proposed distributed change control workflow. # 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.