Collaborative Product Development (Collaborative Product Design) (CPD) is a business strategy, work process and collection of software applications that facilitates different organizations to work together on the development of a product. It is also known as collaborative Product Definition Management (cPDM).

Introduction

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Although companies working together to develop a product in an extended enterprise is nothing new and most of the collaborative software technology being used has been around for some time, the bringing together of methods and software application tools into one discipline is relatively resent. This has come about due to a number of factors:

• Increased globalization of commerce.
• Increasing number of corporations with departments in different locations needing to work closer together.
• Increased Outsourcing of tasks.
• Departments in same company (maybe due to takeovers and mergers) with different technology formats having to work closer together.
• Companies working with partners who may have specialist knowledge.
• Increasing role of 1st tier supplier and their importance to OEMs

Exactly what technology comes under this title does vary depending on who you ask; it however usually consists of the PLM areas of: Product Data Management (PDM); Product visualization; team collaboration and conferencing tools; and supplier sourcing software. It is generally accepted as not including CAD geometry authoring tools, but does include data translation technology.

Technologies and methods used

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Clearly general collaborative software such as email and chat (instant messaging) is used within the CPD process. One important technology is application and desktop sharing, allowing one person to view what another person is doing on a remote machine. For CAD and product visualization applications an ‘appshare’ product that supports OpenGL graphics is required. Another common application is Data sharing via Web based portals.

Specific to product data

With product data an important addition is the handling of high volumes of geometry and metadata. Exactly what techniques and technology is required depends on the level of collaboration being carried out and the commonality (or lack of) the partner sites’ systems.

Difference levels of collaboration

If the collaborating parties have the same PDM and CAD systems the task usually involves the direct access and transfer of data between sites. The PDM system will have data storage at more than one site for the large graphics files, file may be copied between sites, how they are synchronized being controlled by the server(s). For the management server and metadata there are a number of options. There could be a single server that is accessed from all locations or multiple PDM servers that communicate with one another. In both cases the PDM software controls access for groups defining what data they can see and edit.

With different CAD systems the approach varies slightly depending on whether the ownership, and therefore authorship of components changes or not. If geometry only has to be viewed then a Product visualization neutral file format (e.g.JT) can be used for tasks such as viewing, markup (redlining) or multi-cad digital mock-up (DMU). It maybe that authorship does not change but components from one group needs to be placed in the assembly of another group so that they can construct their parts, so called work in context. This requires transfer of geometry from one format to another by means of a visualization format or full data translation. Between some systems there is the possibility of ‘data interoperability’ were geometry from one format can be associatively copied to another. If the ownership of a particular file is being transfer then full data translation is required using some form of CAD data exchange technology. For the translation process Product Data Quality (PDQ) checkers are often employed to reduce problems in transferring the work. If different PDM/EDM systems are in use then either data structures or metadata can be transferred using STEP or communication between databases can be achieved with tools based around XML data transfer.

See also

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• Computer-supported collaboration
• Toolkits for User Innovation

External links

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• MetaCollab.net - Collaboration & business - a free collaborative encycolopedia on collaboration.

Collaboration | Computer graphics | Computer-aided design | Engineering | Product Lifecycle Management