An actor-oriented approach to distributed product management systems

Today, complex product development requires the involvement of more and more components and actors. Virtual enterprises are alliances which are often temporary and distributed at different locations. One essential aspect that needs to be considered is that of product configuration management. This paper proposes a distributed management system to make the organization and cooperation of such product development alliances more flexible and changeable. Actors can advertise their own skill and knowledge and seek for partners to form alliances. A multi-agent system can then be constructed to realize dynamic collaborative work during product life-cycles.