EXTRANET NEWS * Week of 2 September 2003
Editors: Joel Orr and N'omi Orr
http://www.extranetnews.com

1. SUMMER IS OVER
2. PRODUCT SIGHT
3. THE LIST
4. TIDBITS
5. QUOTE OF THE WEEK

 

1.  SUMMER IS OVER

Welcome back to EXTRANET NEWS. What happened in the world of engineering collaboration since you last heard from us? On the one hand, very little; on the other, quite a bit.

 

Very little: We haven’t seen any splashy entrances of new collaborative software or service firms. There have been no great technology breakthroughs with the potential to change the way engineering and architectural professionals work together. There haven’t been any major collapses of extranet software or service companies, nor of any projects, due to failure of the collaborative software they used.

 

Quite a bit: Web-based collaboration is finally becoming accepted in both AEC and manufacturing. In AEC: I’ve judged the CONSTRUCTECH awards for innovative construction IT projects for the past several years. The paucity of innovative IT applications has perplexed me in years past. This year, I finally began to see a spark of innovation in the submitted projects. But more importantly, almost all the dozens of submissions included a Web-based-collaboration component.

 

Web-based collaboration is no longer weird. It’s not just for geeks and techies. It has become a recognized part of the engineering automation infrastructure.

 

That brings me to a question that I’d like you to help me answer. Are extranets still an important focus for you?

 

Would you, my reader, be better served if we became, say, ENGINEERING COLLABORATION NEWS?

 

Or is all this folding into the bigger PLM picture? Write to me, editor@extranetnews.com, and tell me what you think.

 

 

2. PRODUCT SIGHT

A press release on CADwire.net, our news service, had a familiar name in it: Bruce Winegarden. I knew Bruce when he was a founder of Point Control Systems, which created SmartCAM, which--through a series of events--wound up at EDS. Bruce had moved out of CAM and into PDM, at Metaphase. In 2000, he and several others founded PRODUCT SIGHT (http://www.productsight.com).

 

The company’s main products, which it customizes for its clients, are SyncroSpec and FindView. SyncroSpec deals directly with numerous “pain points” for product companies. As it says on their Web site, the product can:

  1. Provide specification alternatives to shift production across several global manufacturing plants.
  2. Manage the market-driven revision of product configuration options offered for sale.
  3. Coordinate part and BOM specification with separate MRP/ERP systems at different facilities.
  4. Maximize reuse of existing stock parts and tooling in special orders.
  5. ECN review and release across multiple departments in multiple manufacturing plants.
  6. Reuse existing tooling assembled for different product variants.
  7. Apply model based development for large-scale embedded systems.
  8. Guarantee responsiveness on special-order design requests.
  9. Tie testing, verification, and validation to products, parts, or orders.
  10. Manage product interdependencies among multiple modeling tools for specialized engineering disciplines.
  11. View as-planned specification on factory floor, and collect as-built result.
  12. Improve contract manufacturing supplier relationships through clarified procurement specification.

The Web makes it possible, while avoiding some of the pitfalls of PDM systems.

 

Product Sight’s site has impressive endorsements from Ford’s Dr. Ken Butts, and from Delco Remy America’s president, Richard Stanley. Both emphasize Product Sight’s understanding of the real-world processes surrounding product development, manufacture, and deployment.

 

Recently, Product Sight acquired FindView, an enterprise-wide engineering information search engine.

 

“FindView Solutions,” claims the Product Sight description, “provide group, department or enterprise access to structured and unstructured information from over 370 specific formats, including all major CAD/CAM/CAE authoring applications. Until now, companies had to purchase specific licenses or develop custom programs to obtain information from the proprietary files generated by CAD applications. With FindView, authorized users have immediate access to application data like AutoCAD, INVENTOR, SolidWorks, ProEngineer, Solid Edge, UniGraphics, CADKEY, MicroStation, and other CAD formats. Even content-level access to scanned drawings is provided by this groundbreaking application. Users can access, navigate, search, view and share information in its native format simply by using their Web browser.”

 

Our take: Manufacturing companies seeking collaborative technology would do well to examine Product Sight’s offerings.

 

 
3. THE LIST

 

Total companies: 259 (see who's on The List at http://www.extranetnews.com/).  

 

ADDED: Product Sight

 

 
4. TIDBITS

 

·        An excellent review of PHP-Nuke, the Open Source content-management system, can be found at http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200307/ij_07_30_03a.html

·        Meridian Project Systems User Conference, October 1-3 Las Vegas, NV. See: www.mps.com

·        PLANT SUCCESS is not just a conference at the Philadelphia Airport Marriott, October 15-16, 2003 (http://www.plantsuccess.com)--it is a community. And it comes with a free newsletter, full of thoughtful commentary and fascinating links by industry veteran Carlton Howk. If you have anything to do with plant design, construction, or management, you should find out more about it.

 

5. QUOTE OF THE WEEK

 

"The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor."

 --Sir Winston S. Churchill

 

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Entire newsletter Copyright © 2003 Cyon Research Corporation

 

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