Modern Product Design Platform in Distributed Resource Environment

The resources that product design relies on are more distributed than ever along with the varying of the global design environment. More and more resources outside of enterprises are needed during the product design process. The Modern Product Design platform supporting the product design under the circumstance of distributed resources will meet the requirement of the enterprise's product design and development under such conditions, and will simplify the implementation of the IT support system for integration of design resources outside of enterprises. In this paper the characteristics and supporting technologies of product modern design platform, which supporting the distributed design resource circumstance and centering on the enterprise, are studied. The building method of the platform is presented and a prototype of the product design platform is developed. Three subsystems are included in the platform; they are product requirements analysis system, product design planning system and design knowledge management system. Many design tasks can be supported on the platform, such as product requirement analysis, concept design, detail design, and experiment. The distributing, implementing, tracking and managing of product design lifecycle tasks can also be supported on the platform. The distributed design resources could be sealed as application components to provide design services. Design work flow model and knowledge flow model are built and controlled on the design platform. The design knowledge is managed based on the Six-Dimension Knowledge Classification.