Abstract

We report on our experience using an Internet-based collaborative environment to enhance the design and manufacturing process of a custom-designed artifact transport system (ATS). Specifically, we focus on overcoming the hurdles associated with exchanging heterogeneous information that includes text, graphics, and computeraided design (CAD) data among 15 to 20 geographically-separated project participants, each with his own unique workstation and operating system. To share this heterogeneous information among the team's members, which included designers, physicists, manufacturers and managers, we implemented a collaborative workbench (CW) that was designed specifically for platform-independent design and manufacturing collaboration. The workbench consists of two principal parts: an Internet-accessible portion and a platform-specific collaboration notebook. The Internet-accessible portion runs on a local server and consists of a Project Area that contains project-specific information such...

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