Different platforms, different places: same design view
Tim Lougheed, contributing editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 8/1/2004 12:00:00 AM
Automotive multinational BorgWarner is expecting to see a faster, more accurate design process following the implementation of new collaborative engineering software. Its ambition is to manage changes in product lines—working with a global network of designers, suppliers, and customers—with minimum hassle. The auto parts maker also wants far-flung customers to see information in a presentation style they are accustomed to.
Jeff Fante, IT manager at BorgWarner's Auburn Hills, Mich., facility, explains that when company engineers mount design sessions with suppliers, life gets complicated when people are more than an easy walk from one another. If a project manager doesn't have a specific CAD program loaded, for example, even the simplest design change can demand protracted rounds of back-and-forth messages.
To solve this problem, BorgWarner deployed Framework Technologies' ActiveProduct product life-cycle management (PLM) suite. Using a software module called ActiveProject, everyone on the system has access to the same view of a product or drawing, regardless of the data's original format.
"We saw they were able to do some redlining, some online reviews, and knock the whole thing out in maybe 20 minutes," Fante says. "[It did what] typically would have been done through an e-mail thread and phone calls, and probably would have stretched out over the course of a week."
BorgWarner spent more than a year reviewing its needs before choosing ActiveProduct, says Kevin O'Leary, Framework's product director. The product met BorgWarner's overriding goal to implement a common methodology for engineering work across a large organization.
What gave ActiveProduct an advantage, O'Leary points out, was the software's ability to tailor the presentation to the users' preferences.
"While there are other software tools that do some of the same things, they become a little rigid in terms of individual expression," says O'Leary. "What looks like a little bit of tinkering—putting your icon here, being able to adjust the team's colors, the look and feel—it's kind of like letting them put up their own flag."
While BorgWarner is concentrating its initial applications of ActiveProcess on improving collaboration, Fante already is exploring product data management aspects of the software in his own IT group. Specifically, a tool called ActiveProcess can give him a clear overview of the work undertaken by dozens of people.
"It brings it all into one clean snapshot," he says. "You get the views as far as what's due today, what's due this week, what's due next week, and what was supposed to have been done last week. Those project-management aspects are exactly what we were looking for in the tool."
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