Abstract
Collaboration between business partners can take many forms, ranging from simple exchange of elementary data to collaborative work on product development and division of labor in production and distribution processes. This article describes concepts, systems, and experiences with computer-aided collaborative scheduling. Scheduling is the allocation of resources over time to perform a collection of tasks (Ba ker, 1974). A schedule maps activities to resources, together with their planned start and end times. It determines what activities will be realized with what resources at what time. Scheduling is traditionally seen primarily as an activity geared to a specific workshop or factory. Increased division of labor and globalization of manufacturing activities demand the coordination of distributed production activities. As scheduling decisions are often short term and taken close to execution, real-time information ex change, seamless task collaboration, and contingency management among geographically dispersed factories may be beneficial (Jia, Fuh, Nee, & Zhang, 2002).