Knowledge Integration of Collaborative Product Design Using Cloud Computing Infrastructure

-- T he pivotal key for the success of manufacturing enterprises is sustainable and innovative product design and development. In collaborative design, stakehol ders are heterogeneously distributed chain - like . Due to the growing volume of data and knowledge, an effective management of the knowledge acquired in the product design and development is one of the key challenges facing most manufacturing enterprises. Opportunities for improving efficiency and performance of IT - based product design applications through centralization of resources such as knowledge and computation have increased in the last few years with maturation of technologies such as SOA, virtualization, grid computing, and /or cloud computing. The main focus of this paper is the concept of ongoing research in providing the knowledge integration service for collaborative product design and development using cloud computing infra structure . P otential s of the cloud computing to support the Knowledge integration functionalities as a Service by providing functionalities such as knowledge mapping, merging, searching, and transferring in product design procedure are described in this paper . Proposed knowledge integration services support users by giving real - time access to knowledge resources. The framework has the advantage of availability, efficiency, cost reduction, less time to result, and scalability . Changes made during the early design stage do not cause the significant increase in costs, while during the production stage, sharp increase in costs will occur since many blueprints, design documents or components would require re - work and re - design [ 5 ] . Today's research is focused on optimising the development methodologies to enable shorter time, lower costs and higher quality of the systems [ 2 ] . The pivotal key for the success of manufacturing enterprises is sustainable and innovative product design and development . In order to achieve this goal, it is required to have a real and deep knowledge of former and current procedures in the manufacturing enterprise [4] and future needs as well as customer feedback s and various stages of production cha in activities. Realization of an efficient knowledge transfer between different stakeholders of product development process such as linking customers and suppliers proactively throughout the entire value chain, and collaborating across boundaries in distri buted enterprise s is reinforcing this trend.