The engineering process depends heavily on easy access to a broad library of technical information and resources, usually spread across diverse and changing platforms, teams and geographic locations. In addition to technical information, engineers need access to information from a variety of other functional areas, such as field problem reports from customer service, marketing information that could influence design and quality issues that could be easily corrected by design changes. Accessing and consolidating this information requires significant time and effort. Other information may be stored in multiple databases, making it difficult to access and consolidate. Engineering management must establish, update, consolidate and communicate many interdependent project schedules that are constantly changing.
Projects often involve multiple development groups in different locations and time zones.
Collaboration and coordination are complex to manage. In-person meetings may be impractical, and time differences often make telephone conferences difficult to schedule. And resource libraries are difficult to synchronize between teams, often resulting in increased QA expenditures and slower time to market. The Intranet Solution I ntranets give engineering departments the technology they need for workgroup communication and collaboration, document and resource control and project management. Engineers can share files easily through the network.