An integrated software architecture for rapid product development processes

In the complex process of product development, the ongoing distribution of processes and globalization of markets force companies to implement means of cooperation between partners at remote sites and coordination of tasks. In this paper we describe a distributed software architecture which provides an integrated set of tools for a wide range of Rapid Product Development processes. The central component is an active knowledge base called ASN (Active Semantic Network) which is used as shared data repository and team process coordination and upon which the other components of the system operate. The scenarios described are coming from the car manufacturing area ranging from collaborative development of simulation prototypes using supercomputers to virtual reality analysis techniques.