NETWORK-CENTRIC PRODUCT REALIZATION AND THE ROLE OF STANDARDS Ram D. Sriram, Albert Jones, Mahesh Mani, Rachuri Sudarsan, and Eswaran Subrahmanian National Institute of Standards and Technology 100 Bureau Drive, MS 8263 Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA Contact: sriram@nist.gov Abstract The early part of this millennium has witnessed the emergence of an Internet-based engineering marketplace. Here, engineers, designers, and manufacturers from small and large companies can collaborate electronically in various product development and marketing activities. These capabilities are being enhanced by a new manufacturing software environment comprised of a network of cooperating engineering applications. These applications include multi-media tools and techniques that facilitate collaboration between geographically distributed applications and virtual reality tools that enable visualization and simulation in a synthetic environment. In this paper, we provide an overview of a network-centric design and manufacturing environment, followed by discussions on the role information exchange standards play in the seamless interoperation of these tools and dynamic composition of engineering applications and services. 1. Introduction Twentieth century manufacturing was heralded by the Henry Ford’s introduction of mass production or production-driven manufacturing. This radically changed automobile manufacturing and society, which went from custom-made, expensive cars for the few to standardized, affordable cars for all. It also changed the way everything else was manufactured so that all manufactured goods became affordable for a large segment of society. This new way of manufacturing was based on standardization, which allows independent fabrication of components that get assembled to create the final product. Eventually, this new standardized approach to manufacturing was exported and established in other countries. In this first phase of globalization, manufacturing companies – called Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) - had vertically integrated production lines, usually co-located, to exploit economies of scale. These companies often built the same products irrespective of the needs and social preferences of the customer base. A second globalization phase began toward the end of the last century. This phase was driven by the emergence of worldwide transportation and telecommunication infrastructures. The transportation infrastructure, which facilitated the movement of people and goods, appeared because of the massive innovations in commercial aircraft,