Studies On Process Management Technology In Collaborative Product Development

Collaborative product development has been increasing popular; the process management technology can give more support for it. A systematic study is made on the process management technology in the dissertation, including the software frameworks for process management, the content of the process managenment, and the implementation technology. The main results and originative work are as follows: Research on the software framework of process management. At first, the analysis of requirements for collaborative work in product development is done. Based on the study involved Project Management and Workflow, it is proved that process management is fit for working as the collaborative product development platform. At last, the software framework is presented, and the integration between Project Management and Workflow is studied in detail, the integration principle, the way for working ,the model mapping, and integration interface are described. Research on the content of process management. The content of process management consist of three layers named process management, sustaining management and assistant management. Four views (knowledge, process, organization, resource) are involved with them. The Process Management Hierarchical Model is presented based on the sustaining management and assistant management, with the meaning that process management is the hierarchical solving process involved four views. Research on the implementation technology of process management, including partners selection and process integration. Four principles for Distribution of Production Plan are presented, they described the constraint between the views. Then, a method is developed for partner selection based on the cost optimization, and the result can be got with the way involved three phases. The knowledge is not completed in process integration, for it a method of process integration based on information constraint among parts is presented. More than that, an algorithm for task scheduling is given. Research on software prototype system. WebPDM-a software prototype acting as collaborative product development platform is proposed. The goal, architecture, functional modules and implementation are discussed in detail.