Integrated Enterprise Product/Process Design System

One of the major goals that manufacturing institutions in the United States must achieve in order to be competitive in the world marketplace is getting higher quality products to market faster and cheaper. To accomplish this, they must leverage technologies, both new and old, to their fullest extent. One of the main obstacles to taking advantage of the wealth of software technologies available to these institutions is the problem of integrating these applications into a cohesive cooperative whole. This is a mission critical requirement for several reasons. The current sequential manner in which steps in the process of producing manufacturable product are executed essentially guarantees long and expensive iterations between design, prototyping, and manufacturing. If the various software tools used along the way could be integrated this sequential step by step approach would become inherently more of a cooperative concurrent process. Furthermore, if the approach taken to integration were systematic and non-intrusive, new technologies could be added as they become available allowing the coexistance of state of the art technology with established proven technology. This proposal presents an integration framework which provides such a solution.