You can't Google product data
by Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 7/1/2005 12:00:00 AM
One look at Google's stock price tells you search technology is hot. And its popularity has a number of vendors looking to replicate Google's success—albeit on a smaller scale—by developing search engines that cater to niche markets.
For instance, Product Sight sells search technology optimized for product life-cycle management (PLM).
"Engineering and manufacturing businesses use many different applications across the product life cycle—2D drawing programs, 3D CAD packages, Microsoft Office, and ERP software," says Product Sight CEO Bruce Winegarden. "A single unified search tool allows people to find all of these forms of product data, and then navigate the interrelationships using a Web browser."
Winegarden calls the Product Sight solution a "search-powered PLM" tool, because "it understands part numbers and drawing numbers, revision levels, and states. A search engine like Google would simply come back with all the different revisions," he adds. "We report the current revision."
Product Sight's technology can be put to multiple uses. Some customers use it to support PLM implementations, explains Winegarden. In such cases, Product Sight essentially automates the product data discovery process, thereby accelerating the rate at which the PLM application can be populated with data.
Rexnord Industries, a Milwaukee-based manufacturer of components for power transmissions, used Product Sight in that fashion. "It helped us beat our initial improvement targets with a rapid deployment, and with minimal distraction to our core engineering personnel," says Peter Ensch, director of engineering.
Others companies place Product Sight alongside a PLM application, using it to publish product data to interested parties.
"Finding information is one thing; sharing it without propagating yet more copies is quite another," says Winegarden. Just as people routinely share Internet URLs that "point" to a particular Web page, Product Sight users can share product-data locations without duplicating and transmitting the data itself.
Product Sight also allows system administrators to control the "scope" of the data presented in a given search, adds Winegarden. "A user on the factory floor might only see current drawings and product data, while the chief engineer could see the whole historic picture."
Other product innovation vendors not listed in the Global 100
| Actify | actify.com | Digital design communication |
| Aras | aras.com | Product-related information management |
| Arena Solutions | arenasolutions.com | Environment for product data management |
| Enterworks | enterworks.com | Product information management |
| Formation Systems | formationsystems.com | Process product life-cycle management |
| FullTilt | fulltilt.com | Enterprise product information solutions |
| Mentor Graphics | mentor.com | Electronic design automation |
| MSC Software | mscsoftware.com | Enhance and automate product design and manufacturing |
| Omnify | Omnifysoft.com | Product life-cycle management for the electronics industry |
| Sopheon | sopheon.com | Software and services for product development |
