A survey and implementation framework for industrial‐oriented Web‐based applications

Internet technology is changing the way of product development, ranging from information gathering, product managing and commerce to product development, and maintenance. In order to obtain the evidence of the extent of Web‐based applications in industry, we did a survey to examine the impact and need of the Internet in product development under industrial environments. This paper provides a view of Internet‐based applications in Canadian industry based on the data received from 42 Canadian small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), which results in a solution to improve current Web‐based industrial applications. A framework of an industrial‐oriented Web‐centred system is proposed based on the demand found from the survey. Some examples are provided to demonstrate applications of the proposed framework.