Tewkesbury, Gloucester-based Racal-Redac Systems Ltd and Sherpa Corp of San Jose, California have launched what they claim to be the first truly enterprise-wide information management system for electronic design automation, Vision-Sherpa/PIMS. The system combines Racal’s Expert Vision Tool Framework with Sherpa’s Product Information Management System, Sherpa PIMS. It has resulted from a joint marketing deal launched at last year’s Design Automation Conference in response to what the companies say is strong demand among their customers for a comprehensive ‘tool’ and ‘enterprise’ framework. ‘Tool’ frameworks, such as Racal’s Vision product, integrate the applications and data relevant to particular functional disciplines like simulation and layout.
Entire spectrum
Enterprise frameworks, like Sherpa’s system, are more broadly based, encompassing multiple disciplines with their respective tool frameworks, central storage of all product information, company-wide communication about product status and mechanisms for controlling change. Racal-Redac and Sherpa say that, by integrating their products, they are the only vendors to offer users this entire spectrum of functions. Vision Sherpa/PIMS enables users to extend their enterprise management systems into the tool framework and so manage products from concept to shipment and beyond. It provides users with detailed information about designs and updates component libraries to ensures that all access and status information is consistent throughout an organisation. Changes in any sub-element of a design automatically invoke a procedure to generate new versions of other affected parts, which must themselves be approved. The library can also be wound back to a prior date to generate profiles of archived designs. The ability to track manufacturing information in this way, according to Racal and Sherpa, reduces paperwork, the risk of errors, time to market and costs. It takes about a year before the benefits of such a system are felt – but if the findings of a survey by Coopers & Lybrand are correct they are worth the wait. The survey of 30 companies using product information management systems reported 15% to 20% increases in revenues, time to market cycles reduced by a sixth, and a possible 100% increase in profit. Vision Sherpa/PIMS is a client-server based product for Sun Microsystems Inc Sparcstations, Hewlett-Packard Co HP 9000s, Digital Equipment Corp VMS and Ultrix and IBM Corp RS/6000 workstations. It costs UKP10,000 for the server and UKP1,000 for the client and is available now from Sherpa. It will initially be aimed at large corporate users – with current Racal and Sherpa customers being the obvious first target. These are drawn mainly from the aerospace, electronics, automotive and medical equipment industries and include Boeing Co, Hewlett-Packard, AT&T Co, Intel Corp, Siemens AG, General Motors Corp and Fisons Plc. A version for smaller companies, employing hundreds rather than thousands of employees is planned in around a year. The agreement between Sherpa and Racal-Redac is a non-exclusive one, and Sherpa is hoping that it will be able to establish similar partnerships with other tools system vendors. Racal meantime is assured a year’s head start on its competition. Sherpa is keen to exploit what it sees as an unsaturated market. The management of product information is the one area of manufacturing yet to be automated; there is only a handful of companies using product information management systems and in many cases tools and enterprise data frameworks are separate. When compared with the CAD/CAM market, the potential for product information management is huge, Sherpa’s European marketing manager, Doug Macdonald, believes. He reckons that the market is set to double every year, and the company seems well placed according to industry analysts. Yankee Group found that Sherpa revenues accounted for 21% of the total product information management market in 1990; and DH Brown Associates in their 1991 survey found that Sherpa products were used by 48% of individuals
working in the sector, a total of 17,000 users. – Lynn Stratton
