Knowledge integration of collaborative product design using cloud computing infrastructure

The pivotal key for the success of manufacturing enterprises is sustainable and innovative product design and development. In collaborative design, stakeholders are heterogeneously distributed chain-like. Due to the growing volume of data and knowledge, an effective management of the knowledge acquired in the product design and development is one of the key challenges facing most manufacturing enterprises. Opportunities for improving efficiency and performance of IT-based product design applications through centralization of resources such as knowledge and computation have increased in the last few years with maturation of technologies such as SOA, virtualization, grid computing, and/or cloud computing. The main focus of this paper is the concept of ongoing research in providing the knowledge integration service for collaborative product design and development using cloud computing infrastructure. Potentials of the cloud computing to support the Knowledge integration functionalities as a Service by providing functionalities such as knowledge mapping, merging, searching, and transferring in product design procedure are described in this paper. Proposed knowledge integration services support users by giving real-time access to knowledge resources. The framework has the advantage of availability, efficiency, cost reduction, less time to result, and scalability.