Platform to support dynamic collaborative design processes in virtual enterprises

Collaborative product design favours the identification of innovative solutions as well as enriches participants’ experience. Nevertheless, design and supply chain integration in product development processes is not a trivial task. Main difficulties are related to the different levels of individual expertise of team members and to the different organization of involved companies. The complex scenario of the extended enterprise triggers research toward the development of efficient methods and tools for supporting the design teamwork. The present paper illustrates an innovative co-design platform that implements an approach to support dynamic collaborative design processes. Starting from the definition of a new design process model integrating different collaborative dimensions, the proposed approach is based on the formalization of the distributed knowledge in terms of interaction rules and representational models. In particular the process variability is managed through a new dynamic workflow system able to handle unpredictable events occurring when multiple partners collaborate. Experimentation is carried out in order to identify main system advantages and critical issues.