A flexible Web-based PDM approach to support virtual engineering cooperation

The objective of the work presented in this paper is to provide a methodology and tools for distributed PDM environments especially suited for virtual project based cooperation in engineering design. A research project called WebFlex-PDM (Web-enabled Flexible PDM federation) is introduced. This project mainly deals with extensions to existing PDM systems to provide the capability for easy integration into different PDM environments of cooperation partners and to enable use of various geographically dispersed WWW-based engineering information resources. In order to analyze the requirements for a flexible management of distributed engineering information resources the paper first describes an application case study. The requirements are compared to the state of the art of distributed PDM solutions and the existing deficits are shown. Finally the main ideas, the architecture, and prototype modules of the WebFlex-PDM approach are presented.