Specification of a repository to support collaborative knowledge exchanges in IPPOP project

The increasing competition and complexity of products and processes require new organizational concepts for product development. Collaborative design deals with the sharing of various interests and resources among various actors aiming to reach a common purpose. This purpose relies on the development of products using knowledge sharing and interactions along some coordination between these varied activities. Our aim is to provide a collaborative design environment which allows inter-skill collaborations to be coordinated by defining a common repository for knowledge exchanges in a collaborative design situation. This work takes part of the IPPOP project (Integration of Product – Process – Organisation for engineering Performance improvement). This paper will focus on the most constrained collaborative design situation, related to conflicts management. From a domain analysis of conflict management processing, the first elements of a repository are given by identifying involved knowledge and formalizing protocols driven by actors to resolve conflicts. The Integration of the specified collaborative conflict resolution system in a global design environment is then discussed.