A model for collaborative technologies in manufacturing

Groupware or collaborative systems allow a team to interact in a shared workspace despite geographical separation or diverse schedules. Current collaborative integrated manufacturing systems tend to focus on the design stage of the development process. However, design is only one stage of standard frameworks for problem-solving-based development, which typically include a more comprehensive set of stages from problem formulation, planning and design to testing and deployment. Problem solving methodologies and tools, originally developed for single-user environments, can be extended to multi-user collaborative problem solving models and systems. This paper considers the characteristics of existing collaborative systems in manufacturing and then proposes a methodology-based, object-oriented view of the structure of such systems, which also addresses such factors as the effect of distributed cognition and social protocols. We then show that existing research on both individual and collaborative problem solving models pertinent to groupware systems theory, as well as work on the effect of factors such as group cognition, group psychology, sociology and team dynamics, support this approach to the design of collaborative manufacturing environments.