Developing user interfaces: ensuring usability through product & process
Developing user interfaces: ensuring usability through product & process
A method and tool for human-human interaction and instant collaboration in CSCW-based CAD
Computers in Industry - Special issue: Collaborative environments for concurrent engineering
Exploring mutual engagement in creative collaborations
Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity & cognition
A framework to analyse collaborative performance
Computers in Industry
Computer supported collaborative design: Retrospective and perspective
Computers in Industry
Collaborative computer-aided design-research and development status
Computer-Aided Design
Web 2.0 and Social Networking for the Enterprise: Guidelines and Examples for Implementation and Management Within Your Organization
Knowledge web-based system architecture for collaborative product development
Computers in Industry
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Efficient collaborative product design is crucial for extended enterprises willing to develop complex products pursuing a short time to market. However, successful collaborative product design depends on the ability to effectively manage and share engineering knowledge and data throughout the entire product development process. Co-design software platforms aim to facilitate cooperation in distributed teams. In the context of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) the advanced co-design software implementation to support the supply chain is not a trivial task. SMEs have peculiar characteristics such as flexibility, ICT skills and financial resources, which are difficult to be integrated within a structured design network. This paper presents a method to define and evaluate a co-design platform dedicated to SMEs in the mechanical product field. System architecture is defined by applying suitable metrics based on collaborative process characteristics in order to assess functionality performance of the available tools. Benchmarking is based on different levels of collaboration recognized in the typical product development process in SMEs. Correlation between process metrics, software functionalities and specific collaboration requirements is managed by adopting Quality Function Deployment (QFD) techniques. A practical case study allows the robustness of the proposed method to be verified and the main advantages and future developments to be discussed.