Intelligent Manufacturing € May € 1996 € Vol. 2 € No. 5

News in Brief

Marcam Forms Partnership with CODA
Marcam Corp. (Newton, Mass.), a supplier of open enterprise applications for process and discrete manufacturers, has formed a worldwide cooperative partnership with CODA (Harrogate, England), a supplier of enterprise-wide financial accounting software systems. The partnership will offer process manufacturers software solutions combining Marcam's Protean enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications and CODA-Financials, CODA's client/server financial software.
Marcam and CODA have collaborated on several recent sales. Zamek, a German food company, selected a full ERP solution composed of Protean manufacturing applications and CODA-Financials.

Both companies were also selected by Sun Chemical in a $14 million order for Protean and CODA-Financials. Sun Chemical is deploying the software as part of a global initiative to establish information technology systems with the initial and on-going agility to empower business and technical users to anticipate, rather than react to, business changes. Protean manufacturing applications and CODA-Financials are now being implemented in 25 Sun locations in 13 European countries as well as the U.S.

Under terms of the agreement, Marcam and CODA will engage in cooperative product integration using Open Applications Group (OAG) standards. Marcam and CODA are founding members of the OAG, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing connectivity and integration among enterprise software applications.

SDRC Signs Deals with Lockheed and ADtranz
Structural Dynamics Research Corp. (SDRC) (Milford, Ohio), a supplier of product data management (PDM) and mechanical design automation software, has signed a three-year, $3.8 million deal with Lockheed Martin Astronautics (Bethesda, Md.), an aerospace/defense contractor. Astronautics designs, develops, tests and manufacturers a variety of advanced technology systems for space and defense, including space systems, space launch systems and ground systems. The order includes SDRC's I-DEAS Master Series software, engineering services, maintenance and training.

SDRC has also received an order for 16 seats of I-DEAS software from ADtranz GmbH (Berlin, Germany), a train manufacturer. ADtranz will use the software in the development and manufacture of passenger trains and train components for operation on public railways.

Libbey-Owens-Ford Licenses American Software's SCP
Libbey-Owens-Ford Co. (Toledo, Ohio), a flat glass manufacturer for the automobile and building products industries, has licensed the Supply Chain Planning (SCP) software system from American Software (Atlanta, Ga.) to improve the accuracy of its forecasting. The licensing of SCP is part of a series of immediate system improvements at Libbey-Owens-Ford aimed at improving customer service, inventory control and the overall efficiency of how the company loads its plants.

SCP is architected around business events to provide a hands-on tool that proactively alerts managers to events that will impact their business. Features include six forecasting models, ranging from a moving average model to a dynamic winters model. The system automatically selects the most accurate model for every required forecast on-the-fly, depending on seasonality, flexibility requirements and other factors, and copes automatically with abnormal demand.

Gensym Teams Up with Kenonic Controls
Gensym Corp. (Cambridge, Mass.), a supplier of software products and services for developing intelligent systems, has signed a systems integrator agreement with Kenonic Controls Ltd. (Calgary, Alb., Canada), an automation engineering company specializing in industrial control and information systems. Kenonic plans to apply Gensym's G2, a real-time expert system development tool, in optimizing oil and gas production by layering it above wide-area SCADA and plant control systems. This will help operators minimize production costs.

G2 applications can be used to monitor complex operations, analyze data, detect problems and opportunities, provide advice, make decisions and take action in real time, as well as design, plan and schedule operations.

Tecnomatix Receives Order from Fiat
Tecnomatix Technologies (Novi, Mich.), a vendor of computer-aided production engineering (CAPE) software for automated manufacturing systems, has signed a deal with Italian automobile manufacturer Fiat worth over $450,000. Fiat has placed an order for six licenses of Tecnomatix's Dynamo product, which enables studies of assembly and disassembly operations of newly designed products and simulations of assembly activities and maintenance procedures. This order follows an initial order for one license last year.

Chrysler Inks Five-Year Pact with Rockwell Automation
Automobile manufacturer Chrysler Corp. (Auburn Hills, Mich.) and Rockwell Automation (Milwaukee, Wis.), a supplier of automation solutions, have signed a five-year agreement. Rockwell makes the computer-based controls that help automakers produce complex parts with precision and assemble vehicles more automatically with both speed and consistency.

Rockwell will develop software that helps Chrysler integrate the design of automation controls into its product design phase. The agreement names Rockwell as Chrysler's automation controls supplier of choice for its assembly plants, stamping and welding plants, and all powertrain facilities over the next five years.

It is hoped that sharing advanced technology earlier in the process will help reduce the time spent to design, debug and start up an automation control system. Chrysler expects to reduce significantly total manufacturing system costs and improve time-to-market for its products.

Wonderware Signs Deal with ASAP
Wonderware Corp. (Irvine, Calif.), a supplier of industrial automation software, has signed an agreement with ASAP Inc. (Chagrin Falls, Ohio), a provider of industrial control applications. Wonderware will incorporate technology from ASAP's ASIC-100 open control software to provide additional operating features of a future PC-based control software product.

The new product, expected to be announced at the end of the year, will be a real-time, PC-based control system that runs on the Windows NT operating system and support Microsoft OLE Automation and OCX technologies. It will support industry standards and be tightly integrated with the Wonderware InTouch supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system.

Poulan/Weed Eater Inks Pact with E/Step
Poulan/Weed Eater (Shreveport, La.), a manufacturer of hand-held outdoor power equipment, has chosen the Finished Goods Series (FGS) software from E/Step Software (Tieton, Wash.) to manage its finished goods inventories. FGS in an integrated, PC-based software package which helps companies reduce finished goods inventories and improve customer service by computing accurate inventory targets.

MTI Donates Software to SME Education Foundation
Manufacturers Technologies Inc. (MTI) (West Springfield, Mass.) is donating up to $150,000 worth of its manufacturing cost estimating software this year to engineering programs in colleges across the U.S. The software -- including the Costimator and RapidCost -- will be distributed through the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) Education Foundation.
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