Custumer oriented virtual cooperative product design

Market competition is forcing companies to develop and manufacture diverse products to meet customer's requirements. It is very important to respond to the market quickly in design. In this paper, a Web-based virtual design environment is presented, which allows customers to participate in product design directly and help designers to adjust the structure of their products conveniently. In the proposed system, product family models are constructed and a special feature language is defined. A product configurator is designed and the product configuration process is also accomplished. A collaborative environment, which is used for customers and engineers to discuss with each other, is also introduced. The cooperative design of an instrumental cabinet is introduced as an implementation, which has proved the feasibility of the system.