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Electronics Manufacturers and Their Supply Chain Partners
Demonstrate Standards for Product Data Exchange
Standard Interface Promises Increased Efficiency, Shorter Time to
Market and Improved ROI for Outsourcing
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Herndon, Va. — April 24, 2001 — A coalition of electronics manufacturers, solution providers and standards organizations demonstrated the exchange of engineering and manufacturing data over the Internet at last week’s RosettaNet Partner Conference. Based on proposed IPC and RosettaNet standards, this prototype demonstration illustrated how the manufacturing supply web can increase efficiencies, shorten time to market and improve return on investment (ROI) by using standards-based interfaces to exchange data between partners.
The standards showcased in the demo are the first of several initiated by the National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative’s (NEMI’s) Virtual Factory Information Interchange Project (VFIIP). VFIIP has worked closely with RosettaNet and IPC to ensure consistency between the two organizations’ standards and to leverage efforts toward the common goal of enabling agile, cost-effective data exchange among supply chain partners.
Organizations involved in the prototype demonstration were Agile Software, Extricity, Georgia Institute of Technology, Intel, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Netfish Technologies, Nortel Networks, SCI Systems and PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC).
Vin Melvin, chief information officer of SCI said, "Many of our customers are OEMs, each with their own systems and methods of defining product data. SCI wants to create a common process to bring in all our customers’ data for fast, flexible and effective information sharing and responsiveness. This will allow a global and far more consistent approach to managing the integration of new products and releases within our environment."
Return on Investment
John Cartwright, program manager, Supply Chain Applications, Mergers, Acquisitions and Outsourcing for Intel, said he estimates that use of the proposed data exchange standards will yield significant return on investment for both OEMs and EMS providers.
"Historically, major OEMs had to install leased lines directly into their trading partners’ manufacturing facilities in order to transfer files securely. This required firewalls, servers and dedicated personnel to handle the validation and entry of information into the manufacturer’s internal bill of materials management system," Cartwright said. "Two years ago, this kind of system could run as much as $350K in set-up costs and more than $100K in annual fees. That’s on the OEM side. Then there are additional costs on the EMS side to install and maintain each proprietary system. If you take this cost scenario and multiply it times the number of major trading partners EMS companies have to deal with, the result is millions of dollars spent annually on proprietary set-ups and maintenance."
Demonstration Details
In the prototype demo, proposed RosettaNet Partner Interface Processes™ (PIPs™) 2C1 through 2C6 and the proposed IPC-2578 standard were used to support data interchange between two OEMs (represented by Nortel Networks and Intel), two EMS providers (represented by SCI Systems and Georgia Tech) and a supplier (represented by NIST).
The demo specifically showed how the PDX standards and the related RosettaNet PIPs can be used in concert to initiate a new product build and implement engineering change requests. Both the RosettaNet and IPC standards provide an XML (extensible mark-up language) encoding scheme that enables a total product definition to be encoded at a level appropriate to facilitate supply chain interactions.
In the demo, the OEMs sent two different bill of materials (BOMs) to each of the EMS providers, and the BOMs were loaded into the respective systems. In addition, the supplier initiated an engineering change request which was communicated back through the EMS providers to the OEMs. The significance of these interactions is that they were accomplished using three different gateway products and the participants were loading the BOM information into different back-end systems.
For demonstration purposes, Nortel Networks ran its own internal system plus PTC’s Windchill Gateway for RosettaNet to pass the PIPs; while Intel used an internal system and Extricity B2B™. The two EMS providers made use of Netfish Technologies’ XDI Server plus Agile solutions · Agile Integration Server™ and Agile Anywhere™ · for implementation of the PIPs (including transport and security) and for implementation of BOM load and change management. Similarly, NIST (as the supplier) used the Netfish XDI Server as well as their own query engine · based on other RosettaNet PIPs · to access component information. Although not shown in the demo, these standards can also capture and transfer post-production product configuration data and are being enhanced to include quality reports.
Background & History
The prototype demonstration leveraged thousands of hours of work by some of the industry’s leading OEMs, EMS providers, solution providers, plus government and academia. Through NEMI’s Virtual Factory Project, these organizations joined forces to develop standards that would help shorten the time and reduce the cost required to establish and maintain information exchange partnerships across the electronics manufacturing supply web. Project participation continues to increase, and current members include OEMs (Intel Corporation, Lucent Technologies and Nortel Networks), EMS providers (Celestica, Inc., SCI Systems, Inc. and Solectron Corporation), vendors and solution providers (Agile Software Corporation, Extricity Inc., GenRad Inc., Ingenuus Corporation, META Group, Netfish Technologies Inc., PTC, Universal Instruments and Valor Computerized Systems), plus government (NIST) and university members (Georgia Tech).
Building on project participant Agile’s exchange model, VFIIP developed a series of product data exchange (PDX) specifications to enable supply chain partners to exchange manufacturing and as-built product information. NEMI is collaborating with IPC, which created the IPC 2570 series of standards specifically for the PDX specifications. NEMI has also established a partnership with RosettaNet, which is integrating the PDX standard suite into its Cluster 2 (standards relating to product information) and Cluster 7 (standards relating to manufacturing).
Intel’s Cartwright is a leader of NEMI’s Virtual Factory Project and also product manager for RosettaNet’s Clusters 2 and 7 as well as program manager of Discrete Manufacturing. He says that a significant benefit resulting from the close coordination between VFIIP, RosettaNet and IPC is the consistency of naming conventions and structure between the IPC and RosettaNet standards.
"We wanted to be sure that we did not end up with competing and conflicting specifications for exchanging the same type of information," he said. "By harmonizing the IPC standards with the RosettaNet PIPs, we are able to give industry a clear and unambiguous way of exchanging information that requires a single port of the exchange software rather than a different solution for each trading partner. That’s a really big win. RosettaNet has even created its PIPs so that the IPC standards can be directly attached. It doesn’t get more integrated than that."
The RosettaNet and IPC standards will enable trading partners to exchange and manage the following:
- Load bill of materials (BOM) information (without manual mistakes).
- Manage approved vendor list (AVL) and approved manufacturer list (AML) information.
- Update and track approvals of engineering change orders (ECOs).
- Report work in process information in real time.
- Distribute warranty entitlement information from "as-built" manufacturing information.
- Track quality information within the manufacturing process.
- Create and distribute quality alerts to contain any manufacturing excursions.
- Load catalog information for use in BOMs and to respond to requests for quotes.
- Include engineering notes, CAD/CAM design information, or other information that can be attached and used in the decision-making processes.
IPC-2578 is one of three PDX standards currently available for industry comment, and IPC is targeting this June for final release. The RosettaNet 2C1 through 2C6 PIPs were recently voted on and have been released.
About NEMI
The National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative’s mission is to facilitate leadership of the North American electronics manufacturing supply chain. Based in Herndon, Va., the industry-led consortium is made up of more than 50 electronics equipment manufacturers, suppliers, industry associations and consortia, government agencies and universities.
NEMI roadmaps the needs of the North American electronics industry, identifies gaps in the technology infrastructure, establishes implementation projects to eliminate these gaps (both business and technical), and stimulates standards activities to speed the introduction of new technologies. The consortium also works with government, universities and other funding agencies to set priorities for future industry needs and R&D initiatives.
About RosettaNet
RosettaNet is an independent, non-profit consortium dedicated to the collaborative development and rapid deployment of open Internet-based business standards that align processes within the global high-technology trading network.
More than 400 companies representing over $1 trillion in annual information technology, electronic components and semiconductor manufacturing revenues currently participate in RosettaNet’s standards development, strategy and implementation activities. A complete list of partner companies and more information on RosettaNet can be found at www.rosettanet.org.
About IPC
IPC- Association Connecting Electronics Industries® is a US-based trade association dedicated to the competitive excellence and financial success of its nearly 2,700 member companies which represent all facets of the electronic interconnection industry, including design, printed wiring board manufacturing and electronics assembly. As a member-driven organization and leading source for industry standards, training, market research and public policy advocacy, IPC supports programs to meet the needs of a $44 billion US industry employing more than 400,000 people.
Trademark Notes: Agile Software, Agile Anywhere and Agile Integration Server are trademarks of Agile Software Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries; Extricity and Extricity B2B are trademarks of Extricity, Inc.; PTC and Windchill are trademarks or registered trademarks of Parametric Technology Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and in other countries; SCI is a registered trademark of SCI Systems, Inc.; all other brand or product names are trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective holders.
See Also
For additional information:
Cynthia Williams, NEMI
phone: 207-871-1260
cwilliams@nemi.org