Open Standard, Open Source and Peer to Peer Tools and Methods for Collaborative Product Development

Hayder Aziz, Enterprise Integration, Cranfield University, James Gao, Enterprise Integration, Cranfield University, Paul Maropoulos, School of Engineering, University of Durham, and Wai M. Cheung, School of Engineering, University of Durham

12/22/2008
(Original Publish Date: 4/5/2005)

This paper reports on a collaborative product development and knowledge management platform for Small to Medium Enterprises. It has been recognised that current Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) implementations are document oriented, have a non-customisable data model and inter-enterprise integration difficulties. To overcome these, an ontological knowledge management methodology utilising the semantic web initiative data formats was added to a PLM and an opensource alternative. Shortcomings of centralised architectures are highlighted and a solution using a de-centralised architecture proposed. This is implementable at low cost, the scalability increases in line with user numbers. Ontologies, rules and workflows are reusable and extendable.