TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
The State of the Art in Engineering Collaboration and Data Management
Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Engineering collaboration aims at providing concepts, technologies and solutions for supporting work in dispersed engineering teams. The increased industrial demand for this innovative approach is based on the fact that networked organisation structures are common in numerous industry sectors, like automobile, aerospace, electronics or construction. Collaboration has become a key issue for agile and flexible engineering processes.
The rapid evolution of information and the new potential for communication between people have been of great importance to the success of most industry organisations. Key aspects are the increased availability of computer networks and the trend towards collaborative team work.
An understanding of the collaboration demanded from different engineering domains is crucial for providing adequate organisational and technical support. The present paper reviews state-of-the-art engineering collaboration (technologies, role of ICT standards, development trends, etc.) as well as data management as two of the key areas for enabling future generation engineering.