Complicated product oriented collaborative document management system

The researchers and developers of DM system always ignore the fact that the development of complicated product is composed of several phases, each of which has its own management demands to documents. In this paper, we present a collaborative DM (document management) system to manage heterogeneous, distributed data of complicated products in the large size enterprises. A concept of library was introduced as the basic logic unit for storage and management of document data in accordance with phase. The difference of operations permitted in each library promised distinct management demands of specific phase. Typically, a product was divided into three libraries: a design library, a controlled library and a product library. Automatic document transfer between libraries was implemented in the charge of workflow. According to the concept of library, there could be one-to-one correspondence between each product and an independent database. In addition, each library operated with an individual, distributed file server for high throughput.

1. Introduction

Looking at today's business world, decentralization of organizations and business companies has become a major success factor. Outsourcing, joint ventures, and international consortia have led to work environments which are geographically distributed across organizational and national boundaries. Empirical studies verify the need for coordination support to avoid expensive inefficiencies, errors, and delays, and emphasize the importance of collaborative design, development and management in decentralized working environments.