Effective collaboration among members of a team is the key to success, whether the team is a group of engineers designing a new engine or a group of physicians planning a medical procedure. This is now widely recognized, as can be seen by the numerous national initiatives emphasizing teamwork such as Concurrent Engineering (CE)1, Total Quality Management (TQM), Integrated Product Development (IPD), Open System Architecture for | CHAPTER 12 CONCURRENT ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGIES V. Jagannathan Y. V. Reddy K. J. Cleetus K. Srinivas R. Karinthi Concurrent Engineering Research Center West Virginia University Morgantown West Virginia INTRODUCTION 261 Technology Overview Related Research 267 270 COLLOCATION SERVICES 262 Technology Overview 262 CORPORATE HISTORY MANAGEMENT SERVICES 271 COORDINATION SERVICES 264 Issues in Product O Technology Overview 265 History z 1 INFORMATION SHARING 267 12 6 CONCLUSION 274 INTRODUCTION Effective collaboration among members of a team is the key to success whether the team is a group of engineers designing a new engine or a group of physicians planning a medical procedure. This is now widely recognized as can be seen by the numerous national initiatives emphasizing teamwork such as Concurrent Engineering CE 1 Total Quality Management TQM Integrated Product Development IPD Open System Architecture for CIM and the Virtual Enterprise VE . Advances in database and networking technology Internet technologies groupware multimedia and graphical user interfaces as well as a steep drop in the cost of computing make possible the creation of a truly collaborative environment that transcends the barriers of distance time and heterogeneity of computer equipment. The ideal collaborative environment will enable any member of a team to communicate spontaneously and thereby collaborate with any other member of the team. This chapter provides an overview of technologies that facilitate geographically distributed teams to work together. Four primary categories of infrastructural services are needed to support collaboration collocation services coordination services information-sharing and integration services and corporate history management services. These are discussed in the remainder of the chapter. Numerous people over the past eight years contributed to the development of the material
