Simultaneous Product Development Provides a New Approach to Design Collaboration

Product development is becoming increasingly global and as a result, new challenges have emerged,such as coordinating geographically dispersed teams of suppliers and partners. Consequently, the modern enterprise is more similar to a network of interconnected nodes that work in parallel and need constant dynamic synchronization. The widespread adoption of digital design documents, the introduction of collaboration tools like Web-based review and mark-up, and Internet-accessible databases have made design data more readily available.