Collaborative Product Development

Collaborative product development (collaborative product design) (CPD) is a business strategy, work process and collection of software applications that facilitates different organizations to work together on the development of a product. It is also known as collaborative product definition management (cPDM).

Collaborative Product Development helps individual users and companies manage, share and view your CAD projects without the cost and complexity of purchasing an entire PDM or PLM solution. CPD comes in the form of a Software as a service delivery model, which allows for rapid iterations and little or no downloads and installs.

Exactly what technology comes under this title does vary depending on whom one asks; however, it usually consists of the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) areas of: Product Data Management (PDM); Product visualization; team collaboration and conferencing tools; and supplier sourcing software. It is generally accepted as not including CAD geometry tools, but does include data translation technology.

Clearly general collaborative software such as email and chat (instant messaging) is used within the CPD process. One important technology is application and desktop sharing, allowing one person to view what another person is doing on a remote machine. For CAD and product visualization applications an ‘appshare’ product that supports OpenGL graphics is required. Another common application is Data sharing via Web based portals.

With product data an important addition is the handling of high volumes of geometry and metadata. Exactly what techniques and technology is required depends on the level of collaboration being carried out and the commonality (or lack thereof) of the partner sites’ systems.

Collaboration using PLM and CAx tools requires technology to support the needs of:

Appropriate technologies are required to support collaboration across these boundaries.

People

Effective PLM collaboration will typically require the participation of people who do not have high level CAD skills. This requires improved user interfaces including tailorable user interfaces that can be tailored to the skill level and specialty of the user.

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