Integrating Design Document Management Systems Using the Rosettanet E-Business Framework

Abstract

E-business frameworks providing standards and specifications that aim at enabling integrating the enterprise applications of business partners with relative ease have been recently proposed. This paper reports on experiences gained from developing a prototype system for integrating design document management systems based on the RosettaNet e-business framework. We present the requirements for the prototype, extracted from a case study of a product development network, and the design and implementation of the system. We then discuss the experiences gained in the light of the feasibility of applying such frameworks and their supporting technologies as foundations for e-business. The RosettaNet e-business framework was found to be relatively easy to implement and use. However, the RosettaNet specifications for product development processes and the related business document definitions, e.g. for design document delivery, are not sufficient in all respects. As a consequence, two implementations of the same RosettaNet standard process may be incompatible, and thus the aim of providing easy integration may fail. Furthermore, the effort required to build the system and fill in the missing parts in RosettaNet to integrate the product design activities may risk the goal of easy integration.