Collaboration Technologies for Global Manufacturing

Abstract

Abstract One impact of the globalization of manufacturing is the growing requirement for teams that are not co-located to collaborate using shared information. In this paper, we present our approach to instituting and assessing collaboration technologies for manufacturing applications. We provide a brief overview of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and groupware and discuss some potential uses in manufacturing. We describe related research at NIST, focusing on a process engineering collaboration scenario. We also present two approaches to collaboration technology deployment, seeding and accelerated deployment, aimed at reducing deployment costs in the manufacturing environment. Ultimately, the work presented here, in addition to similar systematic deployment and assessment of collaboration tools in other manufacturing scenarios, will provide knowledge that is useful for manufacturers who wish to efficiently deploy and effectively use collaboration technologies.