Product category:
3D CAD software
News Release from: CoCreate Software | Subject: OneSpace collaboration software
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 29 August 2001
Collaboration software helps with
vehicle headset
A new CD-sound-quality wireless headset that will appear in 2002 DaimlerChrysler minivans has earned Aptec and CoCreate Software a top 10 customer/vendor pairs spot in a recent study
A new CD-sound-quality wireless headset that will appear in 2002 DaimlerChrysler minivans was the subject of a case study that helped Aptec and CoCreate Software, earn a top 10 customer/vendor pairs spot in a recent Aberdeen Group study Aberdeen Group is a leading IT market analysis and positioning services firm
The DaimlerChrysler case study - submitted by CoCreate, a pioneer and leader in collaborative product design solutions, and APTEC, a product development company with a proprietary methodology - was profiled as a top 10 implementation in a report titled, "Collaborative Product Commerce 2001: What Works.'" Aptec is a supplier to Recoton, an Orlando, Florida-based consumer electronics company providing overall headset design and manufacturing services for Alpine, DaimlerChrysler's tier-one audio vendor.
Spanning Michigan, multiple locations in Florida, South Korea and the Philippines for design, engineering and high-volume parts manufacturing, the wireless headset design project is a model of global collaborative engineering.
According to the team's estimates, the project was completed nine months faster than it would have been, had the team used conventional communication methods, such as site meetings for design reviews.
Aptec attributes the time savings, and, ultimately, cost savings, to using the OneSpace collaboration solution from CoCreate Software to coordinate the design process.
OneSpace, which allows disparate global partners to meet in a virtual conference room, provides a common interface that lets users view, manipulate and annotate 3-D and 2-D models and data.
"Because OneSpace collaboration took place without requiring travel to a common site - about $10,000 for every trip to Asia Pacific - more people could get involved in the headset design sessions," said Tom Morris, CIO of Aptec.
"That meant more buy-in on the product design earlier in the development cycle and with a minimal investment of time.
The OneSpace sessions also helped us transcend language barriers.
Participants in a OneSpace session could simply point and move the model or even modify it.
We didn't need to rely solely on spoken language to explain precise engineering details.
Instead, we could let the engineering speak for itself.
Collaboration using OneSpace has become a cornerstone of the way we do things." "When just a few days can make or break a schedule, companies need to be able to spend every waking second moving their product design ahead, not wasting time sitting on planes," said Tilman F.
Schad, CEO of CoCreate.
"Collaborative engineering is rapidly becoming part of the engineering culture.
And forward thinkers like Aptec have discovered that OneSpace is critical to their ability to compress schedules, meet deadlines and solve problems when dealing with a global supply chain." "In the past year and a half, there has been a substantial amount of hype surrounding the CPC market," said Jack Maynard, research director in Aberdeen's Collaborative Business Solutions practice area.
"This report documents concrete, real world implementations and lets the CPC suppliers, the end users, the investment community, and other interested parties know that CPC products are delivering tremendous value to the early adopters of this technology.
Aptec and CoCreate have accomplished a significant milestone in providing and demonstrating measurable benefits to Alpine and, ultimately, DaimlerChrysler, through their project.".
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