Collaborative planning of a manufacturing design project through a novel e-engineering hub

Abstract Due to globalization of economies, organizations have started a new way of thinking in projects development. New needs arise on working practices as well as supporting Information and Communication Technologies. This article describes a novel concept of an e-engineering HUB for remote collaboration on engineering partnerships. It offers collaborative project planning services that focus on collaborative, tactical decision making that goes into the formation, work planning, contracting and trust building on both sides of an e-engineering partnership. An e-Hub software prototype has been developed and a domain-specific scenario originated in the manufacturing-engineering domain has been evaluated.