VEI : an intelligent web collaboration system for virtual engineering

Abstract

With the globalization of world economics, more and more globally located teams are involved in the procedure of engineering design. The teams have members working on the same project but living around the world in different time zones and thus having different working hours. The collaborations among the team members are intensive and important to the success of the project. Traditional collaboration methods, such as mail, telephone and so on, cannot fulfill the requirements of fast and efficient collaborations among the team. Virtual Engineering Initiative is an intelligent web collaboration system, which is designed to meet the collaboration needs of such teams. This thesis discusses the design and implementation of Virtual Engineering Initiative. Virtual Engineering Initiative has ten main components, which can be further classified into four functional groups: video conferencing, information publishing, instant messaging, and meeting scheduling. Video conferencing enable users to collaborate in a virtual conference room. Database backed web publishing enables users to publish information published before, in and after. Web Based Discussion Boards, Email, News Group, BBS and Public Folder enable users share their information when offline. Instant Messaging allows users to send messages to others in real time. By integrating commercialized systems from different vendors, Virtual Engineering Initiative achieves high efficiency and stability. Virtual Engineering Initiative provides Meeting Scheduler to save team members from the burden of time-consuming meeting scheduling. Virtual Engineering Initiative chooses the distributed system as its meeting scheduling system structure and implements it as a software agent system. Meeting Scheduler adds an intelligent feature into the system by automating the procedure of meeting scheduling. Virtual Engineering Initiative has been successfully used by the 42V Consortium as their collaboration platform in the design procedure of a new electronic architecture.