A hypermedia based model for concurrent engineering

Concurrent engineering activities can be greatly improved thanks to reusing abilities both for the engineered products and their related information and for the project management and its tasks parallelization. The architecture we built to support such an organization is based on this paradigm acid integrates both the information system and the project description and management. As the first point is quite dose to documents management whereas the second is similar to parallel processing and multi-tasks architectures in computer science, our meta-model applies to concurrent engineering some strategies and tools taken from computer science. These methods and tools are mixed to provide a global meta-model modular and adaptable to different contexts. Thanks to an intense use of ''models'' or ''generic descriptions'' and adapted retrieval functions, the stress is put on the re-usability of the engineering knowledge and concurrent engineering know-how, i.e., the projects organization and management.