Towards a typology of electronic product information distribution

In today's manufacturing business chains organizations have to co-operate to meet the ever changing customer requirements for more specific and more complex products. This results in an enormous increase in the need for product information in the different organizations within the business chain. This need can only be satisfied through switching to electronic distribution of product data in the business chain. In this paper, we consider some approaches to electronic distribution of product information. Although this seems to be a technical problem at first sight, the main issues are caused by the number of parties involved, leading to organizational and political oriented questions. This is illustrated by a number of cases, resulting in a typology for product information distribution.