Computer-supported cooperative work in industrial automation

The development of computer and communication technologies has reached a point where automation becomes a versatile tool for solving crucial problems relating to process control, plant supervision and information management. However, though, automation is powerful for solving control problems, it is short of capability to handle coordination and cooperation issues, therefore, requiring the incorporation of appropriate CSCW (computer-supported cooperative work) tools. This paper introduces a simple, but effective, CSCW architecture-the "virtual whiteboard", which is able to facilitate multimedia information, such as text, graphics and images. The paper also presents the construction of such a whiteboard prototype system which, written in C, which currently runs in an X-Windows environment, using communication based on TCP/IP protocols and Ethernet/ATM LANs. Another prototype system which runs on Window NT and telephone networks is under development.