A Comparative Analysis of Project Management Information Systems to Support Concurrent Engineering

Abstract

Many organizations have attempted to create information technology systems to support the collaborative concurrent engineering, including project management functions, capable of meeting the needs of all types of industries, projects and purposes, i.e., a universal collaboration platform. The result is an exceptional amount of IT products organized under a myriad of tool classes and promising to solve all of the collaborative engineering problems. However, each firm is a universe in itself, with its own culture, specific product characteristics, language, methods, rules, standards, etc., and this makes all the difference between efficient communication and efficient collaboration. Are the barriers to the design of collaborative IT concurrent engineering infra-structure similar in all cases? Since these systems are becoming popular, it is important that enterprises know that their first challenge is to support senior and project management in the difficult task of finding for the correct IT products in order to create a collaborative engineering environment that is efficient and economically feasible.