Chapter 1: Organizational issues

Title: Supporting collaboration in product design through PLM system customization

Author(s): Guillaume Pol, Christophe Merlo, Jeremy Legardeur, Graham Jared

Address: ESTIA/LIPSI, Technopole Izarbel, 64210 Bidart, France | ESTIA/LIPSI, Technopole Izarbel, 64210 Bidart, France | ESTIA/LIPSI, Technopole Izarbel, 64210 Bidart, France | SIMS, Cranfield University,Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 OAL, UK

Reference: International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management 2007 pp. 21 - 30

Abstract/Summary: This paper deals with the proposal of a framework for coordinating design process through a PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) system. Design coordination implies that project managers are able to structure their project, assign resources and define the schedule of the resulting tasks with specific objectives and performance criteria. In Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) the design process is generally described at a macro-level which does not fully correspond to the complexity of the real process. To improve design coordination in SMEs a method for analyzing informal collaborative practices is introduced in order to help modeling detailed but flexible design processes. Then these processes are implemented by using PLM technologies: multi-level workflows are implemented to control document workflows through synchronization tasks.

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