Users See Greater Benefits In Tight Supply Chain Links

Computerworld - The blowup between Ford Motor Co. and Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. over tire recalls may be the most visible example of the type of crisis that could be averted by companies sharing product data.
But for most companies, achieving efficiencies - rather than avoiding tragedy - is what's driving the increasingly popular move to collaborative supply chain systems. Boston-based AMR Research Inc. has predicted that license revenue for product life cycle management tools, which let companies share information with various departments and suppliers while designing products, will grow by 48% this year to $759 million.
Before companies head down this path, they need reliable and secure Web connections and collaborative applications. They also need trust between the parties involved, extensive business process revamping, and training for both employees and partners. They may also find that some of the technology doesn't yet do everything they want it to and could face challenges in getting partners to jump on the bandwagon.
Haworth Inc. is one company looking to benefit from this technology. The Holland Mich.-based maker of office furniture is setting up an automated collaborative system with its suppliers to manage engineering data more efficiently and share information globally among its various engineering departments, said Kathryn Farynowski, vice president of global order fulfillment. This system will help Haworth design its products faster, better and for less money.
The company currently uses a mix of third-party and homegrown systems to store and manage engineering drawings, and it would like to do more than add a Web interface to that system.
"We're expanding beyond Michigan and we need to manage products and projects globally, and our internally developed system was not developed with that in mind," said Farynowski.
Haworth is considering implementing product data and life cycle management tools from vendors such as Structural Dynamics Research Corp. in Milford, Ohio, and Parametric Technology Corp. in Needham, Mass. It hasn't yet found the right technology to link it to suppliers so early in the process that they can share data from the design phase on, however.
Compaq Computer Corp. has been grappling with how to standardize some manufacturing processes across the server companies it has acquired, Digital Equipment Corp. and Tandem Computers Inc., each of which had its own procedures and systems.
Compaq recently announced the rollout of product life cycle management software from SAP AG. The system will pull together 10,000 employees from different branches to share data during the design process and to purchase parts for use across the company's manufacturing divisions, said Don Borgal,