Aziz, HayderGao, James X.Maropoulos, Paul G.Cheung, Wai M.2006-04-282006-04-282005-04Hayder Aziz, James Gao, Paul Maropoulos and Wai M. Cheung, Open standard, open source and peer-to-peer tools and methods for collaborative product development, Computers in Industry, Volume 56, Issue 3, , April 2005, Pages 260-271.0166-3615http://hdl.handle.net/1826/1049http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.compind.2004.12.002This paper reports on a collaborative product development and knowledge management platform for small to medium enterprises. It has been recognised that current product lifecycle management (PLM) implementations are document oriented, have a non-customisable data model and inter-enterprise integration difficulties. To overcome these, an ontological knowledge management methodology utilising the semantic web initiative data formats was added to a PLM and an open source alternative. Shortcomings of centralised architectures are highlighted and a solution using a de-centralised architecture proposed. This is implementable at low cost; the scalability increases in line with user numbers. Ontologies, rules and workflows are reusable and extendable.171627 bytesapplication/pdfenArticle