A Framework of Collaborative Green Product Development Process Control

[[abstract]]Collaborative product development and quality assurance system play an important role in current e-commerce and global environment. Especially, the environmental protection issue becomes a sustainable quality factor of product development. Through the supply chain, cooperation is required to ensure the product quality can match the environmental requirement. In this case, to provide timely product information to meet quality and ?green? requirement, a mechanism of communicating product data and information related to ?green product? is essential. However, quality assurance for product development heavily relies on correct product information. Issues such as irrelevant information and requirement conflict among the supply chain in a collaborative environment are also bothersome. To solve the above problems, this research proposes a framework of collaborative green product development process control to examine the green product information flow. In this framework, a simulation module is created to evaluate green information exchange. An approach of improving information identification based on a communication mechanism is also proposed. The process of ?green product development? is used as a case study to simulate several scenarios of retrieving product component information. Based on the proposed framework, a web-based collaborative green product development process control platform focused on product information sharing is developed through combining an object-oriented software (EXTEND). Part of the green product requirement retrieved during the development process is used as the input of triggering the simulation function provided by EXTEND. Green requirement requested by customers are especially investigated to identify possible conflicts among members of a supply chain. The result of this research shows the feasibility of applying the proposed framework into the real green product development process for enterprises