Methodologies and Tools for Co-operative Interaction in the Design Process

Abstract

Product and process technology are rapidly evolving, and competition is becoming more and more globally based. The increased competition has forced the market to move from mass production to customer-driven production: customers are placing an increasing emphasis on quality and reliability, but at the same time looking for good value. Providing environments which support the concurrent engineering paradigm and the co-operative interaction among the different actors involved in the design process can help manufacturers to reduce design cycle time and improve product value. The aim of our work is to investigate the use of currently available technology for co-operative interaction in the design process and suggest new solutions to improve the application of such a paradigm to the mechanical engineering field.