An information exchange system for supporting product development

This paper attempts to propose an information exchange system to support the early stages of product development. This proposed system characterizes the "dynamic" information exchange capability through its distinct features to include executable tasks within product information that is being utilized in various functional groups, thereby introducing the action items to be carried out in relevant areas. To achieve the "dynamic" information exchange capability, object technology, which is favorable to the creation of inter-related modularized data objects, is incorporated to the product information to facilitate active information interchange process. The universal extensible markup language (XML) is also adopted to facilitate data exchange between database and knowledge base in order to make real time data and knowledge available throughout the enterprise