MIDAS: A framework for integrated design and manufacturing process

In this paper, we present a development of a framework for managing design and manufacturing process in a distributed environment. The framework offers the following facilities: (1) to represent the complicated engineering design processes (2) to coordinate design activities and execute the process in a distributed environment and (3) to support a collaborative design by sharing data and processes. In this paper, the process flow graphs, which consist in tasks and the corresponding input and output data, are used to depict the engineering design process on a process modeling browser. The engineering activities in the represented processes can be executed in a distributed environment through the cockpit of the framework. The communication among the related engineers to support a collaborative design is made on the collaborative design browser with XML underlying data structures of representing process information to make the framework extensible and platform-independent The formal and flexible approach of the proposed framework to integrate the engineering design processes can be also effectively applied to coordinate concurrent engineering activities in a distributed environment.