A web-based collaborative product design platform for dispersed network manufacturing

Many multi-national companies have operations in geographically different locations. They need to communicate and work concurrently on large amount of complex product data with their factories, sub-contractors as well as suppliers across the border. The use of e-mail and fax are far from satisfactory as they are time consuming and ineffective. In this paper, a web-based collaborative product design platform is proposed which enables authorized users in geographically different locations to have access to the company's product data such as product drawing files stored at designated servers and carry out product design work simultaneously and collaboratively on any operating systems. There is no need for the users to install any utility software at their ends since the access is based on a remote screen sharing technique built upon a Browser/Server and thin client technology. This results in substantial saving in the cost and the product development time in a network environment.