Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2004
Collaborative development of engineered products in a business to business (B2B) environment requires more than the selection of components from an on-line catalogue. It involves the electronic exchange of product, process, and production engineering information during both design and manufacturing. Although the state of the practice does include a variety of ways to exchange product data electronically, it does not extend to the exchange of manufacturing process data. The reason is simple: process data are usually tied to specific manufacturing resources. These resources are not known typically at product development time. This paper proposes an approach called integrated product and process data, in which manufacturing process data are considered during product development. This approach replaces traditional process plans, which are resource specific, with a resource-independent process representation. Such a representation will allow a much wider collaboration among business partners and provide the necessary base for collaborative product development.