Towards a Computer-Supported Cooperative Environment for Concurrent Engineering

Computer-supported cooperative work has been the focus of attention in a concurrent engineering environment for some time. This paper studies this cooperative team environment from three perspectives: (a) the infrastructure of communication and information model viewpoint; (b) the planning and control of workflow viewpoint, and (c) some implementation viewpoints Implementation viewpoints in- dude constraints' management, negotiation, and memory capture and management. A set of enabling technology in each perspective area and its rationale are discussed. Finally, a structure of the whole system environment including definitions of an architecture and a global user interface are introduced.