Mountain View, CA August 22, 2002 bom.com this week announced that Air International (US) Inc., an automotive industry supplier, is signing on to use bom.com's online product lifecycle management (PLM) application. With the application, Air International said it hopes to centralize its bill-of-materials (BOM) management, collaborate more effectively with globally dispersed suppliers and gain a more efficient way to control changing product data.
Michael Repetto, program manager at Air International, said his company uses contract manufacturers and suppliers that are located around the globe, and therefore its suppliers and employees need to have access to the latest part and engineering change information at any time of day from any place in the world. "[With bom.com's PLM application] we can obtain quotations from multiple potential suppliers in one-third less time, thus directly impacting our competitiveness. And the product change management module has streamlined our change process, resulting in change implementation that is also one-third faster and much more effective."
Air International selected bom.com to address several of the costly issues it was facing during design and manufacturing. The company's change-review process entailed weekly, full-team meetings that drained resources and slowed development. Getting a new product quoted required time-consuming, manual supplier communication that limited the number of quotes the company could obtain. Air International said it chose bom.com for functionality that solved these problems and for its online architecture, which makes communication and collaboration across the supply chain fast and secure.
According to bom.com, the PLM application provides a centralized environment for managing product data, allowing original equipment manufacturers, suppliers and outsourced partners to collaborate in real time around a single set of information regardless of geographic location or IT infrastructure. Other benefits include improved product quality and faster time to market.
