Classification Schemes: Some Genesis and Maintenance issues

This paper proposes elements for a theoretical frame to tacle shared information spaces issues in relation with cooperative organisation of work. It also provides some questions to discuss. Research Context These reflections are grounded within cooperative activities in aeronautics design process. I spent two years performing successively ethno-methodological participative observations within two international cooperative teams (60 people, German and French). These short projects lasted one year each. They were innovative in two ways. People used for the first time tools specified for long aircraft design projects:- organisation: creation of an Integrated Team for aircraft re-design, i.e. short-term and high time-pressure projects; “lightest ” normative procedures. (i) technology: use of a digital mock-up (DMU), and of Concurrent Engineering design methods. The French Design teams, representing 5 different skills (Mock-up Integrators, Structure and Systems design, Stress, Manufacturing) were more or less co-located on the same “platform”. The production teams, working within 3 different specialised manufacturing units, sent representatives to the platform two days a week; the German partners had sent a co-located design team (4 to 10 people from different skills) for project A, and stayed in Germany for project B. All the members were supposed to use the DMU. In a general way, the different skills and partners are inter-dependant and need to exchange information about their part of the worksharing according to joint activities dynamics