Agent-based collaborative product design engineering: An industrial case study

Globalization and rapid evolving of Internet and Web-based technologies have revolutionized the product development process. Engineering a product is a complex process involving the integration of distributed resources, such as human beings, engineering tools, and a large variety of product-related information systems. Software agents have been playing an increasingly important role in this area to reduce the need for large, complex, and centralized systems. This paper presents the results of an industrial case study in the development of a collaborative e-Engineering environment for mechanical product design engineering by applying intelligent software agents, Internet/Web, workflow, and database technologies. A software prototype system has been implemented on a FIPA-compliant agent platform, with a wheel-axle assembly being used as a test case for system validation. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.