San Jose, CA March 19, 2002 A quartet of companies has signed on to use a design collaboration solution from Agile Software in an effort to accelerate time-to-market while improving internal efficiencies, according to an announcement this week from Agile.
Credence Systems, Hill-Rom, Hitachi and QUALCOMM are implementing Design Integration 8.0, a solution that Agile said allows companies to improve communication and information flow between engineering and manufacturing, helping to improve time to market by eliminating manual conversion of design data into operations data.
Design Integration integrates multiple design tools to Agile's suite of applications and automates the engineering-to-manufacturing product release process by publishing items, bills of material (BOM), attributes, CAD drawings and 3-D models into Agile's solutions, allowing engineering and operations to share relevant design data. Also, Agile claimed that the solution provides visibility of design data across the product chain, so materials can be sourced earlier.
The system supports 20-plus engineering data sources across both Unix and Windows, including electronic computer-aided design (eCAD), mechanical computer-aided design (mCAD), product data management (PDM) and network file systems, according to Agile.
"The challenge is that both manufacturing engineering and design engineering, who are often in multiple locations, use various computer-aided design (CAD) tools," said Peter Bilello, a senior consultant with consultancy CIMdata. "The output from these CAD systems must be shared in a usable form by operations and suppliers before sourcing, buying and production activities can begin."
"The Agile Design Integration solution will allow Credence Systems to minimize redundant data entry and the amount of errors typically associated with the handoff of design information from engineering to manufacturing," said William Palleschi, engineering manager for Credence. Palleschi added that Credence expects the solution to help the company reduce time to market and operating costs by streamlining the product release process.
"Agile's vision is to enable manufacturers to more efficiently and cost effectively manage their products through every phase of the product profit cycle," said Lou Unkeless, vice president of product collaboration solutions at Agile Software.
