| Summary: | This thesis has studied how ISO STEP application protocols can be used as a base for development of enterprise information systems that provides information sharing capabilities in a collaborative environment. In this thesis, five papers have been selected and are presented in the context of four themes that characterize the whole research body. The four themes are: - Standard models as a base for development of IT systems - Applications operating on integrated (standard) models - Sharing of information - Sharing of collaborative processes The research have been performed in both an academic and industrial context, where the researcher have taken an active role in how to shape the solutions that became the result of the research project. Initially the projects were limited to virtual manufacturing with a focus on the management of manufacturing information. However, gradually the scope grew to include management of product information across the lifecycle. Also the organizational context was widened to include management of information that is shared between companies across their company borders. The growing scope made the research to take on new aspects for each new area of issues that surfaced. One overall issue that surfaced was how to be able to exchange product data between companies over a long time and at the same time be able to impose configuration control of the shared information. One of the major conclusions is that sharing of information over time and across the lifecycle in a virtual enterprise is a task that involves more efforts than the task of exchanging product data of the same type (e.g. design data, CAD files) between two companies. The results of the research show that the ISO 10303 application protocols are qualified for use in an enterprise product data management environment. However, the result also shows that there are a number of issues to deal with when developing a product data sharing environment based on standards. For example, how to efficiently transform and use the data structures of ISO 10303 application protocols in the different layers of a software system, the data layer, the business object and services layer and the user interfaces. Other issues are on how to deal with the neutral representation such that companies can integrate their contextual information with the neutral product data representation. Future research is recommended to look more close into how the new evolving software architectures that becomes more mainstream today, such as Enterprise Service Bus technology (ESB) and Cloud Computing, amongst others, can utilize the ISO 10303 application protocols as their canonical format. Another important area is to further elaborate, and integrate ISO 10303 with existing technologies for Reference Data and unstructured data that today get more and more traction === QC 20100920
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