For two or three years, manufacturers have been trying to accelerate the product development process by using the internet to share designs for components or assemblies with suppliers, or to pass design work on from teams in one time zone to another.

More recently, non-engineers across an enterprise have been able to look at, and react to, the work of their designer colleagues with the aid of web-based visualisation software. This displays slimmed-down versions of 3D models on their office PCs.

Now, manufacturing is entering an entirely new era that is called - depending on the software vendor or analyst you talk to - collaborative commerce, collaborative product development (CPD), or collaborative product commerce (CPC).

Aberdeen Group, the Boston-based IT consultancy, defines collaborative commerce as "software and services that use internet technologies to tie together product design, engineering, sourcing (including manufacturing and purchasing) sales, marketing, field services and customers into a global net".

The past few months have seen a spate of announcements and initiatives from vendors in the computer-aided design (Cad) and product data management (PDM) sectors, aimed at turning this vision into reality.

In the summer, for example, US-based Unigraphics Solutions unveiled what it calls the iMan Portal. This aims to combine the power of the internet with UGS's iMan PDM software, and is designed to provide a single point of access to product information data, irrespective of its source.

"Everyone in the collaboration space would use the portal," says David Punter, European marketing director at UGS. "If you were an executive, you would see it as your route to managed data, rather than floundering around."

The portal's Java-based framework is designed to enable users - employees of the enterprise, suppliers or customers linked through the internet - to collaborate throughout the product life cycle. Its ability to create a modern, web-enabled framework for old applications is generating considerable interest in the automotive sector, says Mr Punter. "They can see a lot of data in old databases that they can now plug back in."

Another recent initiative from UGS, developed jointly with Microsoft, is DesignKNet (Design Knowledge Network). This is an internet-based "collaboration environment" which will let large numbers of users in different locations work together on design changes in real time. It is based on Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system and the community and conferencing aspects of the software giant's Exchange 2000 technology.

Both companies expect DesignKNet to appeal not only to large manufacturers but also to application service providers (ASPs) which want to develop engineering design collaboration portals. A Singapore-based ASP, ConneXwave, has already said it would use the tools suite to provide Asian companies with "collaborative commerce solutions at internet speed".

This type of role, along with others, such as hosting collaboration sites and managing data, creates opportunities for ASPs in the collaborative product development arena, says Mr Punter.

"In terms of simply providing a Cadcam [computer-aided design and manufacturing] engineering environment, I don't think the ASPs add a lot of value," he says. "We are talking about very heavy applications and there is no advantage in having the software at the other end of apipe somewhere. But maybe this will change with the move to broadband."

Internet fever has also gripped senior executives at SDRC, another big US-based Cad and PDM software vendor. "We are making all our solutions for product life cycle management web-centric," says Bill Weyand, chairman and chief executive.

"Next year, you'll be able to buy I-Deas [SDRC's Cad product] as a seat [a conventional shrink-wrapped copy] through a portal, or through an exchange. You will use the technology and pay per usage," he predicts.

SDRC recently launched Accelis, an e-business system for CPC which the company is promoting heavily as a non-proprietary, standards-based solution. "One of the key elements that the internet will promote is that everyone will move to industry standards rather than proprietary software," says Mr Weyand.

SDRC's role

He is particularly enthusiastic about prospects for business-to-business (B2B) exchanges and marketplaces and SDRC's role in making them work. The company's core competencies in product life cycle management will be one of three essential elements - with procurement and supply chain management - in these exchanges, he says, because the product database is the backbone of product development.

"We've gone from being a Cad company to being a player in B2Bs and exchanges with our Metaphase database technology.

"Other people, such as Oracle i2 and CommerceOne, will do their pieces, we will do ours. No-one can provide the whole solution."

Mr Weyand argues that if manufacturers have already decided separately to standardise on Metaphase internally, they would hardly be likely to use a different technology in any collective B2B exchange they may set up.

The big names in Cad and PDM do not have this field to themselves, however. Less well-known vendors include San Jose-based Centric Software, which has produced a range of web-centric Collaborative Virtual Product Development solutions.

Meanwhile, UK-based industrial design company xpd (Express Product Development) is soon to launch a web-based collaborative software system that will allow industrial designers to design hand-in-hand with their clients, thus sharply reducing product development times.

The internet, then, seems set to become a sine qua non in the product development field but a reality check is necessary, as these are very early days for collaborative product development.

There is some debate over the readiness of manufacturers for these methods - particularly outside the US where use of the internet in industry is less pervasive - and their ability to keep pace with the bewildering raft of complex, acronym-led announcements from vendors. The latter, which once thought of themselves as Cad vendors pure and simple, now like to be viewed rather grandly as vendors of collaborative commerce software.

Widespread proof of the new tools' usefulness in action will not be available for a year or two but there are already some solid examples. One is Erco Lighting, a German-based manufacturer of architectural lighting, which is using Autodesk's iDrop technology to turn its website into an online catalogue of "smart content". Users can drag-and-drop content from the site - such as lighting fixtures - directly into design work on their desktops.

The opening last week of Europe's first CPC Collaboration Centre, with technology supplied by Sun Microsystems and software vendor PTC, should further stimulate interest in the new techniques.

The centre, at Warwick Manufacturing Group's International Manufacturing Centre, near Coventry in the UK Midlands, will connect with similar installations in the US and Asia, allowing teams of engineers to collaborate on design and product life cycle projects simultaneously.

If sites in all three time zones were in use simultaneously, of course, some engineers would be working in the middle of the night. But the internet can get round that, too, enabling companies to carry out 24- hour product development process in three time zones - shifting work from, say, Germany to California and on to Asia. "There are a lot more companies doing this than are talking about it, because they don't want their competitors to know," says Mr Weyand at SDRC.