Rapid one-of-a-kind product development via the Internet : A literature review of the state-of-the-art and a proposed platform

The historical background of Internet-based product design and manufacturing systems for rapid development of one-of-a-kind (OKP) products is systematically reviewed. By reviewing the existing OKP systems and recent approaches of Internet-based design and manufacturing systems, the requirements for the next generation of OKP systems and the current techniques that can be used to implement Internet-based product design and manufacturing systems for the rapid production of OKP products will be discussed. The problems that emerged from recent developments are reviewed and sorted. The future trends of Internet-based collaborative design, decision support, manufacturing support, supply chain management, workflow management, Internet techniques for product design and manufacturing, product modelling, STEP-based data environment, concurrent engineering, etc., will also be discussed. The reviewed state-of-the-art approaches are used directly or indirectly as references for the development of a new generation OKP systems. A reference system structure for building an Internet-based integrated product development system is then proposed to facilitate rapid development of OKP products.