Distributed Information Sharing for Collaborative Systems (DISCS)

Abstract

With the advent of global competition, greater numbers of organisations require collaborations with others. Concurrent engineering can provide a highly effective framework for this collaboration. A distributed object oriented concurrent engineering system (DISCS) focuses on the communication of data between the members of a distributed project team. Conceptually the communication is the enabling factor; technologically the use of the WWW and object oriented technologies. A portfolio of collaboration support tools facilitates practical mechanisms for information sharing within the distributed enterprise, communication/conferencing for project teams, configuration/version control and workflow structures. DISCS effectively facilitates the virtual team, currently within an engineering context.