Product design and development framework in collaborative engineering environment

Globalisation has created a situation of increased international competition, which puts companies under pressure to compete in the value added to customers. This paper presents an integrated framework for product design and development in distributed and collaborative environments. The proposed system integrates the software tools and resources in the design process to enable geographically dispersed design teams and vendors to collaborate. The early participation of the vendors in the design process is critical to improve quality and reduce development cycle-time. The real-time, automated generation and modification of parametric CAD models are introduced to further assist the system reduce the cycle-time.