Distributed information management in virtual engineering enterprises by GEN

In response to the massively changing requirements in the engineering area, enterprises are forced to cooperate with other firms and build virtual engineering enterprises. This paper focuses on the question of how the companies would like to access the various information in those virtual enterprises. It presents results from European projects in the area of Global Engineering Networking (GEN) where we work our solutions with end-users from the engineering sectors of building construction, mechanics and electronics. Starting from requirements for information management in virtual engineering enterprises, this paper derives an architecture for GEN, explains it in more detail by two scenarios from the electrical engineering sector and finally presents the relation to other approaches