Doctoral Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. Abstract Engineering functions require large amounts of complex interdisciplinary information to effectively perform their tasks. Current trends will make these functions more information dependent.
Information management is therefore critical for the competitiveness of any engineering enterprise.
This research is to develop and validate an information driven approach to manufacturing integration, to formalize information-integration, and to develop and validate a framework to facilitate information integration. A case study approach has been used to clarify and prioritize research goals. The case studies and literature are used to define a set of requirements for information integration. A specific application domain is selected for study and a prototype system is developed. The requirements and the concepts are validated against the case studies.