ENGINEERING DATA MANAGEMENT
NEWSLETTER
incorporating the Effective Engineering Management Newsletter
MARKET NEWS
MARCH 1996
Appointments
Joseph Marciano was appointed President of the newly established Océ-Imaging Supplies (Chicago, IL). (+1 312/714-8500)
Cyco International (Atlanta, GA) appointed Kenneth S. Shain as President and Gregory A. Mohl to the position of Director of International Sales. (+1 404/634-3302)
FORMTEK (Palo Alto, CA) appointed Minuro Tomijima as Vice President, Asia Pacific. Mr. Tomijima joined FORMTEK from Adobe Systems Inc. FORMTEK also added Ray Williams as Vice President of Services. (+1 415/842-3000)
Interleaf (Waltham, MA) announced the promotion of Eric Severson to Vice President and Chief Strategist. Reporting directly to President and CEO Ed Koepfler, Eric will co-ordinate the evolution of Interleaf's strategic vision and direction. His Interleaf career began when Avalanche Development Company, which he co-founded, was acquired by Interleaf. (+1 617/290-0710)
Sherpa Corporation (San José, CA) appointed Jürgen Delp as managing director of German operations. (+ 1 408/433-0455)
Computervision Corp. (Bedford, MA) named Salahuddin Khan Vice President of product development and Rock Gnatovich Vice President of Marketing. Khan will be responsible for the development and enhancement of all CV design automation and PDM software solutions. Gnatovich will be responsible for all Marketing operations. (+1 617/275-1800)
Financials
Access Corp., (Cincinnati, OH) announced second-quarter software revenue growth of more than 175% over the same period one year ago. In addition, cash reserves grew during the quarter and now exceed 15% of fiscal 1995 sales revenue. Access also reported that the total company revenue increased by 31% over the same quarter a year ago. (+1 513/786-8350)
Eigner + Partner GmbH (Karlsruhe, Germany) announced that revenues grew by 35% last year. (+49 721/62910)
For the year ended Dec. 31, 1995, Control Data Systems, Inc. (Arden Hills, MN) reported net earnings of $8.9 million on revenues of $454.8 million. This compares to a net loss of $94.4 million on revenues of $524.2 million for 1994. Metaphase Technology, Inc. (Arden Hills, MN) is a Control Data joint venture company. (+1 612/482-4219)
Sherpa Corporation (San José, CA) announced that 1995 was its fifth consecutive year of profitable operations. The company closed the year with $28 million in revenues, experienced a quarterly growth rate of 15%, and added 35 new customers during the year. Sherpa now has more than 55,000 users working for 256 customers at 475 sites in 14 countries. (+ 1 408/433-0455)
On February 6, 1996 Documentum, Inc. (Pleasanton, CA) announced the initial public offering of 1,800,000 shares of its common stock at a price of $24.00 per share. Documentum produced over $25 million in revenue in 1995, up from $10 million in 1994. (+1 510/463-6800)
Installations and developments
Computervision (Bedford, MA) announced that Australia's Qantas Airlines has selected CV's Optegra data management technology for managing, updating and providing access to technical data. The initial implementation will be in the Qantas Engineering Training School to improve the production and maintenance of technical training courses for aircraft maintenance engineers. In a typical year, Qantas delivers around 3,000 training units covering the Boeing and Airbus aircraft in its fleet. Each course has its own training manual which is developed and maintained by Qantas. The primary source for this training information is the Aircraft Maintenance Manuals supplied by aircraft and engine manufacturers. These documents are extremely detailed and require regular updating. The Optegra-based system can accept SGML documents conforming to Air Transport Association standards or any other DTDs (Document Type Definition) which describe the hierarchiacal structure of the document and disassemble or burst these documents into separate data objects in the database. (+1 617/275-1800)
Alpharel, Inc. (San Diego, CA) announced WISDOM, the company's new product that facilitates Internet access to participating electronic document vaults. Users access the vault using their standard browsers, such as Netscape Navigator, Mosaic, Microsoft Internet Explorer, or any other graphical Internet Browser. WISDOM links these browsers to Alpharel's various document management solutions - Enabler, FlexFolder, RIPS or Toolkit API - enabling an alternative search and display interface for documents of all sizes. Security features of the chosen document management solution are enforced independently of the user interface. (+1 619/625-3000)
Interleaf (Waltham, MA), and SoftQuad, provider of SGML tools for Internet publishing and other enterprise-wide solutions, have announced a technology alliance and distribution agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, SoftQuad will supply Interleaf with SGML viewing technologies for use in Interleaf's document management and delivery solutions.
Interleaf announced Interleaf 6 SGML, the newest version of its solution for publishing SGML documents.
Interleaf also announced Intellecte/BusinessWeb, a cross-enterprise document management solution to exploit and control the power of the Web. Intellecte/BusinessWeb is part of Interleaf's Intellecte family of integrated document management products. It provides access to business information by enabling the use of Web browsers to locate and retrieve documents from enterprise document repositories. (+1 617/290-0710)
New customers for Adra Systems' (Chelmsford, MA) Matrix System include Motorola Two-Way Pager Division (Dallas, TX), Motorola Advanced Messaging Systems Division (Fort Worth, TX), Rockwell Communication Systems Division (Dallas, TX), Xilinx (San Jose, CA), PPG Industries Aircraft Products business unit (Huntsville, AL) - a maker of windshields and other components for major aircraft manufacturers, and Deere & Company (Moline, IL). In addition, Kamyr, part of Ahlstrom Corp., is putting 20 seats into production at its Glen Falls, NY facility.
Adra has announced Matrix 3.1, an enhanced version of its Matrix 3.0 PDM solution, which was released in June. Matrix 3.1 is a native Windows 95 32-bit application and compatible with Windows NT. Like the earlier versions of Matrix, Matrix 3.1 will continue to run on Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups 3.1.1 and popular versions of Unix. Matrix 3.1 is available now, with prices starting at $25,000 for the initial 20-user package. Additional user licenses are priced at approximately $1,250 each, and volume discounts apply.
Adra also announced an agreement with SAP AG (Walldorf, Germany) to develop an interface between Matrix and R/3, SAP's business application software. (+1 508/937-3700)
Bionic Knight Software, Inc., (Raleigh, NC) announced it has upgraded DEED PDM 3.0, its object-oriented PDM for Windows to support 32-bit computing architectures. Users can take advantage of the 32-bit architectures in Windows NT and Windows 95. (+1 919/873-0045)
Hitachi Software (Boulder, CO) announced Tracer for AutoCAD and Recognizer for AutoCAD. Tracer for AutoCAD combines Hitachi's patented semi-automatic line-following routines with a Precision Toolkit and a set of raster editing tools allowing users to convert scanned raster images into AutoCAD vector entities. It supports binary, grayscale, and color images in six industry standard formats. Recognizer for AutoCAD is an add-on to Tracer where users can select to convert all or part of their raster images automatically to AutoCAD. Recognizer generates AutoCAD polyline, circle, arc, and text entities. (+1 303/449-3200)
STEP Tools, Inc. (Troy, NY) will demonstrate a pre-release version of ST-203, a software program to manage databases for STEP Application Protocol 203, at CeBIT '96 in the USA CAD/CAM Pavilion. (+1 518/276-2059)
Tokyo Gas, which supplies natural gas to over 8 million customers in Japan, is building a reservoir of its technical assets based on FORMTEK:TDM, acquired through FORMTEK's (Palo Alto, CA) distributor in Japan, Mitsubishi Corporation. The system is already in production and supporting thousands of employees in their daily work. Other new Japanese customers who acquired FORMTEK products through Mitsubishi Corporation in 1995 include Nissan Diesel, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Steel.
The FORMTEK system at Nike Corporation is ready for roll out after passing a successful site acceptance test. In addition to the 50 seats at its headquarters in Oregon, Nike plans to continue installing seats at a rate of 5 per week at its manufacturing sites in Europe and Asia. Two FORMTEK pilot systems were successfully installed at Swedish Volvo Truck Corporation, one to manage Quality Manuals and the second in a Parts Management application. (+1 415/842-3000)
Softdesk, Inc. (Henniker, NH) announced the release of a new version of its automatic vectorizing software. RAStation R2V version 7.2 includes an extensive list of new features and improvements.
Softdesk also announced new versions of CAD Overlay R2V and ViewBase 7.5. (+1 603/428-3199)
Eaton Corporation's Hydraulics Division (Eden Grove, MN) now has 130 users of Workgroup Technology's (Lexington, MA) CMS. CMS now has more than 350 customers worldwide, including New Venture Gear and ADC Telecommunications. (+1 617/674-2000)
A new output driver supporting the Océ 9800 scanning/copying/plotting system is now available from Byers CADNET (Atlanta, GA) with Byers Plot Station 7.4. The new driver allows users of Plot Station and Byers PRF Generator to send plot jobs from the workstation to the Océ 9800. (+1 770/594-9186)
Cimage Enterprise Systems (Bracknell, England) announced Document Manager API, a new component for its Document Manager for Windows product. The Version 1.0 library of APIs is callable from a variety of Microsoft Windows programming and integration environments.
Cimage also announced Universal View, a new component to its ImageMaster document viewing tool. (+44 1344/860055)
In our September 1995 and December 1995 issues we briefly mentioned the use of CIMLINC's (Itasca, IL) Linkage software in Boeing's effort to enhance its competitive position with the introduction of world-class engineering and production processes. Based on the initial success of this software, Boeing has added Linkage Shop Floor Workflow, Linkage Engineering Change Management and Linkage Nonconformance Management to its Define and Control Airplane Configuration and Manufacturing Resource Management (DCAC/MRM) process improvement project.
The DCAC/MRM initiative was established by Boeing Commercial Airplane Group (Renton,WA) to dramatically simplify and improve its configuration processes.
The initiative resulted from an extensive review of business and manufacturing processes that led Boeing to identify areas where process improvements could contribute significantly to lowering costs, improving quality and reducing cycle times. Boeing found that the single biggest cost driver among its four key business processes was configuration management and control.
According to Ron Woodard, President of Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, 'DCAC/MRM is our highest priority, because it affects virtually everything we do. Improving these processes will have an enormous impact on reducing our costs, cycle times, and defects, while increasing customer satisfaction'.
Boeing's Gary Spies, Program Director for Process Development, characterizes the new processes as based upon cross-functional teaming; pulling information rather than pushing it. 'The new world is envisioned as one in which there will be instant flow and availability of accurate and complete information, from customer introduction throughout product delivery.'
In the PDM area, Boeing looked for a solution that could help it achieve its goals of a 25% reduction in production costs, a 50% reduction in time-to-market, and 100% customer satisfaction. It chose SDRC's Metaphase Series 2 solution. (+1 708/250-0090)
Advanced Technology Center (Laguna Hills, CA) has announced ForReview Professional, a major addition to the ForReview Family of networkable view and mark-up products. ForReview Professional combines capability for view and markup of over 100 different CAD, image and office document formats with the network-oriented features pioneered in ATC's newest products. With ForReview Professional, users throughout an enterprise can image-enable their shared workflow across both LANs and WANs, including the Internet.
In a separate announcement, ATC and Computervision announced the availability of OptegraView, ForReview Edition which provides view and markup capabilities tightly integrated with Computervision's Optegra family. ATC is the first partner in CV's new Optegra Partner Program to provide advanced view/mark-up capabilities for the full line of Optegra products. The Program is aimed at integrating best-in-class technology with CV's line of Optegra enterprise data management products.
ATC also announced the availability of ForReview for Documentum. (+1 714/583-9119)
The PDM/EDM afternoon Roadshow from Eigner + Partner GmbH (Karlsruhe, Germany) will visit Berlin (3/25), Hamburg (3/26), Düsseldorf (3/27), Frankfurt (3/28) and Munich (3/29). At CeBIT, CADIM/EDB Version 2.1, the latest version of E+P's EDM/PDM system will be demonstrated on four stands in Halls 2, 20 and 21. (+49 721/62910)
Lubrizol, a manufacturer of oil additives for a variety of automotive and hardware engines, will implement a Trimco (Ealing, England) system at its Ohio HQ and in its Visual Communications department in Derbyshire, England. The UK system will be used to archive and distribute photographs and supporting test documents produced during the development of new oil additives. Initially to be installed as a pilot, the system is expected to expand to at least 100 users and other office locations. (+44 181/579-8788)
Structural Dynamics Research Corporation (Milford, Ohio) announced the beginning of a strategic technology relationship with Ford Motor Company. Ford selected SDRC as its technology supplier of choice to improve the efficiency of its product development process. SDRC will provide Ford with its I-DEAS Master Series software, Metaphase Series 2 PDM software, implementation services, software training, and process re-engineering expertise. According to Neil Ressler, Ford's Vice President, Advanced Vehicle Technologies, 'C3P is the most significant retooling of the design automation environment ever undertaken at Ford. When it is finally implemented, I believe the C3P strategy will provide Ford with a tremendous competitive advantage.' The C3P project (representing CAD/CAM/CAE and PDM) is Ford's new infrastructure that will use the PDM system to integrate their computer-aided design, engineering, and manufacturing into a global system of common data.
SDRC and Mercedes-Benz AG (Stuttgart, Germany) have signed an agreement under which SDRC will deliver a PDM system for the management of car body, powertrain and chassis data. The complete solution includes Metaphase Series 2 software from SDRC and Mercedes-Benz specific customization, which SDRC will perform to comply with Mercedes-Benz requirements. The final solution will manage product and tool data generated from several thousand users in different divisions located at numerous sites around the world. (+1 513/576-2400)
Auto-trol Technology (Denver, CO) will integrate Excalibur Technologies Corp.'s RetrievalWare pattern-recognition and semantic network search and retrieval software into CENTRA 2000, its system for creating, distributing and managing technical information. CENTRA 2000 combines document management, workflow, PDM, change management and messaging in a graphical, client/server computing environment. CENTRA 2000 deploys ORACLE 7 as the central database repository, containing all object metadata, indexing and workflow data. RetrievalWare will create a separate optimized index for pattern-based or semantic searching of document content. (+1 303/252-2486)
IBM (Charlotte, NC) announced its ProductManager PDM solution is being tightly integrated with SAP's R/3 client/server business application solutions to provide a single, secure and highly-accessible repository of data which can be managed across a multi-plant enterprise. ProductManager with SAP's R/3 system provides a global solution for new product introduction and engineering change management where the same part-numbering and change process can be used to simultaneously feed a multi-plant environment.
Black & Decker (Towson, MD), the world's largest producer of power tools and their accessories, achieved annual revenues of $5.2 billion in 1994 with some 35,800 employees. As part of its 'cut and build' strategy, the company recently moved its North American Power Tools division from a mainframe to an integrated design (CATIA) and PDM (ProductManager) solution on RISC System/6000 computers. 'To shorten the product development cycle - for quicker time to market - we wanted a unified, open-system architecture that would provide the foundation for a full range of design and manufacturing capabilities,' said O. R. White, technology manager at Black & Decker's North American Power Tools division. 'We wanted to increase performance and, at the same time, reduce costs. Our mainframe environment just wouldn't allow us to achieve those objectives.' With its 30GB of online engineering drawings, Black & Decker's ProductManager application is connected to an IBM 7135 RAIDiant Array storage subsystem. Optimistic about the future benefits Black & Decker will gain from the new system, White said, 'Using ProductManager, we expect to see a significant reduction in the time it takes us to implement and manage change. We're looking at savings of close to a million dollars in that area alone.' (+1 800/346-7104)
EDS Unigraphics (St. Louis, MO) announced an initial purchase of 750 IMAN licenses by Philips Display Components, the world's largest manufacturer of color picture tubes. The selection of IMAN for Philips' Technical Product Information (TPI) project follows a worldwide 'demonstrator' project centered in Eindhoven, Netherlands and involving Philips' operations in Brazil, France, Taiwan and the US. (+31 10/498-7755)
CMStat Corp. (San Diego, CA) and Metaphase Technology (Arden Hills, MN) announced plans to form a cooperative relationship to develop, sell and support a multi-faceted configuration management offering which will augment their existing products. (+1 619/552-6660)
Control Data (Arden Hills, MN) announced a certified SAP interface for Metaphase. It is based on the standard exchange formats of both systems and supports Metaphase version 2.x and SAP versions R/2 V5.x. and R/3 V2.2. The interface was developed on behalf of Metaphase Technology and was certified in a Control Data project at Danfoss. (+1 612/482-4144)
Cimmetry Systems Inc. (Montreal, Quebec) announced that Applied Materials (Santa Clara, CA) - the largest producer of wafer fabrication systems for the worldwide semiconductor industry - chose CSI's AutoVue as the viewing and markup package for integration with its HP WorkManager PDM system.
In a separate announcement, CSI announced it has teamed with Green Pasture Software (Corvallis, OR) to provide Saros Mezzanine (Bellevue, WA) users with an enterprise-wide document viewing and mark-up application. GPS's Edge is a Saros Mezzanine client application for CAD/CAE drawing management. (+1 514/735-3219)
Logicon, Inc. (Torrance, CA) reported that the Manufacturing Systems and Utility Systems units of Syscon are now part of the Logicon Information Technology Group where they become units of the Information Solutions Division. The Manufacturing Unit provides clients with implementation services for HP WorkManager and other PDM products, including Metaphase 2.0. (+1 619/455-7663)
Workgroup Technology (Lexington, MA) announced CMS 6.0, a major product release of its PDM solution. The three most significant improvements in 6.0 are the introduction of 'part' objects, release management for all clients, and a newly architected vault server. 'Parts' are items that represent the part records in CMS. They are the basic building blocks, that when linked to parent-child associations, define product configurations. Part-to-file coupled links will help users model part to document relationships necessary to manage the set of files that define a product. (+1 617/674-2000)
Addressing the needs of design teams that work on large complex projects, Autodesk's Data Management Market Group (San Rafael, CA) announced AutoCAD Data Extension (ADE) Release 2, its productivity and data integration toolset. (+ 1 415/507-5000)
Océ-Engineering Systems (Chicago, IL) introduced the Océ 9400 mid-volume plotter. It uses electrophotography and enhanced imaging technology to print up to 10 times faster than conventional inkjet printers, and is priced at half the cost of typical electrographic plotters. (+1 312/714-8500)
International Imaging, Inc. (Azusa, CA) has been acquired by Innodata Corp (Brooklyn, NY). All of the employees and officers will remain with the company in their prior capacities. Frank Addamo will be in charge of marketing and sales, Nasim Khoury in charge of contracts and administration, and Dana Lockhart in charge of operations. (+1 818/969-3078)
Documentum, Inc. (Pleasanton, CA) announced Documentum Accelera for the World Wide Web and Documentum UnaLink for Lotus Notes. (+1 510/463-6800)
EDM NEWSLETTER
|
HOME
|
TOP OF PAGE
Copyright (c) 1998 John Stark