The need for speed

Software Magazine, July, 1998 by Ann Harrison

Companies that need to get products to market fast often have to mobilize managers, designers, suppliers, and subcontractors on a global basis. How to get the job done? Swedish automaker Autoliv Inc. recently selected the Matrix Global Advantage enterprise backbone application from MatrixOne Inc., Chelmsford, Mass., to tie together 2,000 users at eight sites in five countries.

"MatrixOne committed to implement this Web-based, fully distributed system with replication and conversion of our legacy product development management (PDM) system for a fixed price and within a fixed implementation time frame," says Jan Olsson, VP of engineering at Autoliv, which builds subsystems for Ford and BMW. To date the firm is pleased with the scalability of Matrix Global Advantage, which uses a Java-based Web client and an Oracle8 database, and its ease of deployment with the MatrixCSM implementation program.

The system also comes with a new set of applications to address digital mockup, change management, configuration management and bill of materials management. An accompanying library of applets for over 100 small processes reduces the need to develop new applications for each customer and lowers cost of ownership. Gould Electronics Inc. in Newbury port, Mass., is running Matrix Global Advantage at four of its electrical fuse plants. Harold Guptill, documentation control supervisor, says he likes the flexibility of the product's three modules, which are designed for systems and business administrators, as well as general users. "It lets you change policies and procedures without having to go through a requirements package," says Guptill. He also likes the fact that the 6.0 release exchanges data with CAD, ERP, and MAP systems. "At the end of the engineering change orders process, we feed data to our ERP system," he says. The MatrixOne PDM system also offers visual modeling capabilities, distributes metadata to all users in the development process, and replicates files in case the network link goes down.