Business process platform overcomes design-time limits
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 10/1/2006 12:00:00 AM
Exostar's ForumPass 3.0 delivers a highly secure platform to manage design- and program-related business processes in a neutral, hosted environment. The result, says Peter Scott, VP of corporate development, is a solution for overcoming the barriers of time and location—as well as enterprise boundaries.
Improved workflow handling within ForumPass allows manufacturers to enforce strict conditions on business processes across multiple suppliers, customers, and partners, whereby processes such as engineering change control can be moved entirely online.
ForumPass 3.0 also offers file-sharing and Web meetings for ad hoc collaboration among engineers and cross-supply chain design teams; a CAD-neutral viewer for drawings and documents; and an enhanced import/export feature for faster file transfer. All information held within ForumPass—as well as user activity—is controlled and auditable based on industry-standard security and identity-management technology.
Within transatlantic aerospace & defense company BAE Systems' Bristol, U.K. operation, ForumPass manages the introduction of engineering and contract changes that must be agreed upon with Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers.
“It's a much better process than pinging e-mails around,” says René Nibbelke, head of office applications. “Typically, the average approval cycle time is now 50 percent of what it was before.”
