New features increase functionality for Product Introduction Collaboration
November 11, 2005, Toronto, ON – ENGINEERING.com Inc. [TSXV:EGN] today released V.2006 of the ENGINEERING.com Collaboration Suite, the premier
hosted engineering collaboration solution for manufacturers. Complete with
online project management, lightweight CAD model viewing, document management,
web-conferencing and supplier management, ENGINEERING.com Collaboration Suite
helps companies manage their new product introductions and other product
development processes across distributed design and manufacturing teams.
One distributed engineering team making use of these capabilities is Aiolos, a
leading designer and builder of automotive wind tunnels and test facilities for
clients all over the world. According to Graham Thomas, Vice President Business
Development, "ENGINEERING.com has allowed our geographically distributed team to maintain effective communication between our engineering design team in North America, our on-site construction partner and our customer in France. We already owned a deployed PLM solution, but Collaboration Suite's ease of use and the ability to bring external participants into the project team quickly were the deciding factors leading us to go with ENGINEERING.com."
"Our research has shown that many PLM solutions fail due to lack of user adoption, which is especially important when distributed internal and external teams are involved. We have focused our efforts in this release on adding new features that will make Collaboration Suite even easier to use," said John Hayes, President of ENGINEERING.com. "To enhance the virtual team environment, new features include things like easier administration of accounts for external users such as customers and suppliers. This allows all users to easily add external bidders for tooling or component parts by simply entering their email address. Managing the bids is easy and secure, and users can collaborate on drawings, parts and assemblies with their external suppliers without having the same CAD systems."
Additional new features within Collaboration Suite will further enhance the user
experience by improved management of process-oriented documents like quotations
and costing worksheets across distributed locations. These features include
online document editing capabilities and automatic email notifications when new
files are uploaded or tasks are due.
"Because this solution is hosted by ENGINEERING.com, our customers received all of the new 2006 functionality automatically at no additional cost and without having to install any new software," added Hayes. "Today's enhancements represent another demonstration of our commitment to delivering the best online engineering collaboration solution in the market."
