Collaborative working environment for innovation in manufacturing industry

The paper addresses the problems of collaboration of teams in manufacturing industry in the scope of innovation processes. The problems of involving different teams and specifically shop-floor teams in product/process innovation are analysed. The objective is to develop a new platform based on software collaborative services supporting different innovation processes where different teams - product and process design, maintenance, shop-floor teams but also customers etc. - around the complex assembly and manufacturing lines have to be involved. The work presented includes a design of new tools and core collaborative services for development of such a platform, aiming at supporting different collaboration patterns. Several potential applications of the platform are described.