A collaborative design framework for the Korean automotive parts industry

In the automotive industry, although small enterprises that supply car parts participate in the design phase of new car development, they do not communicate with each other for developing parts or modules because of the lack of a common communication protocol. In order to provide solutions to such problems, there has been an emergence of collaboration solutions among participants. Moreover, collaborative product lifecycle management (CPLM) is suggested as an alternative for providing such collaboration solutions. In order to develop CPLM, a framework that supports the understanding and sharing of business processes across business boundaries is necessary. Such a framework includes a reference model, business process model, and business process. The reference model explains the business domain, and it must be shared among participants for a common communication purpose. The business process model describes the collaborative design process, which can be defined by common principles in a meta-model. This paper suggests a new reference model for the design chain in the Korean automotive parts industry. Under a collaborative environment, the design process of the reference model may be classified into the mechanical and human-driven processes. In order to define both process types, a new integrated process model that combines the Component Collaboration Architecture (CCA) model of Enterprise Distributed Object Computing (EDOC) and Role Activity Diagram (RAD) models is suggested. We also introduce model driven approach (MDA) of Object Modelling Group (OMG) in order to describe an abstract level for common communication among business partners.