Distributed Project Management Techniques For Collaborative Product Development

With the development of information technology and the tendency of economy globalization, market competition that encountered the manufacturing enterprises is becoming sharper and sharper. The new product developing has become the key to success. The computer supported collaborative product development represents the trends of modern product development technology while the collaborative development oriented project management technology is essential. So the application of project management technology can shorten the developing cycle, reduce the cost and improve the quality, then win the competition.After analyzing the requirement for the collaborative product development oriented project management information system, an architecture supporting product development is put forward. Some functional modules are described in detail. Furthermore, the key technologies to realize the system are abstracted out.Project plan is the precondition for product development while the project modeling is the base of the plan. With deeply analyzing the current modeling technology for collaborative product development, a new integrated project model is proposed based on the project network planning technology and the workflow modeling technology called activity network modeling method. Both of the project management technology based on constraint theory and the workflow modeling technology are deeply studied. Finally a solution for the integrated model is given.The project executing and controlling technology is the grantee of the success in product development. According to the integrated project plan model, a double-layer controlling mechanism is brought out. In the upper layer the schedule controlling and resource controlling is specially studied.Finally a prototype information system is developed according to the theories mentioned above. Its design process is also described in detail.The achievement of this paper helps to support the computer supported collaborative product developing project management.