• IE interfaces
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.182-192
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• 2010

Customer needs for final products are very unpredictable because product specifications and technologies are being improved very quickly thereby their requirement level is also elevated correspondingly. In order to survive and to enhance competitiveness in the global market, many manufacturing companies are trying to find a breakthrough from collaborization. Even though they want to collaborate with others, however, they do not exactly know what kind of system they have to develop or which technology they have to use. In this paper, therefore, we first investigate status and trend of information systems and infrastructure that are essential for collaboration. We then clearly describe definition and classification of collaboration with various point of views considering collaboration pattern, timing condition of collaborative activities, organizational structure, etc. With web-based collaboration systems already developed by i-Manufacturing (Korean-style Manufacturing Innovation) project, led by Korean government from 2004, we introduce main functions and analyze collaboration types of each system. Strategically important technologies for supporting collaboration will also be illustrated by reorganizing collaborization technologies after evaluating them with respect to emergency and importance of each technology. We hope this research will provide a guideline on collaboration especially for small and medium sized manufacturing companies.