Early supplier involvement in new product development on the Internet: Implementation perspectives

WeBid is a prototype web-based framework for supporting early supplier involvement in new product development on the Internet. It provides a suite of tools for establishing and managing the customer-supplier relationships in new product development process. Through WeBid, this paper discusses the issues related to the development and implementation of web applications in product design and manufacture. The typical 3-tier architecture is explained to show how the main WeBid components work together to achieve the intended functionality. A number of Java features are discussed for their suitability for implementing and deploying particular application components. Various options for the connection and deployment of the remote databases are compared in terms of their strengths and limitations. The paper provides some useful guidelines for those who are interested in developing and applying web applications in product design and manufacture in a supply chain or extended enterprise environment.