As modular production becoming increasingly widespread in globalized manufacturing industries, sub modules or parts of the final product are being provided by many suppliers. Some part suppliers design their own products for themselves. In some cases, part suppliers provide the same type of product to multiple OEM companies. Because all part suppliers and OEM companies typically cannot use the same CAD system, engineering change in the CAD model of one company cannot be directly propagated to related CAD models of other companies. Even if two companies use the same CAD system, it may be difficult to share their CAD model owing to corporate security policy. In this paper, a neutral reference model that consists of a neutral skeleton model and an external reference data model is proposed as a new medium for the sharing and propagation of engineering change information among collaborating companies.