A Web portal for distributed concurrent engineering

The paper explains the importance of distributed manufacturing networks (DMNs) as a strategy used by manufacturing companies such as Asea Brown Boveri to gain competitive advantage. An important aspect of DMNs is the development of effective tools that allow geographically dispersed teams to design and manufacture products. The importance of distributed concurrent engineering (DCE) is explained. Manufacturability is presented as a salient aspect of a DCE approach. The architecture of a Web-portal-based distributed concurrent engineering system that analyzes the manufacturability of a product is presented.