CONTACT´s new PDM/PLM Release Features Pioneering Product Innovations

CIM DATABASE 2.9.8 ships as most comprehensive release in company’s history

Bremen, 14th June 2010 – With CIM DATABASE 2.9.8, CONTACT Software GmbH launches its most comprehensive update ever. The new PDM/PLM platform release boasts with a multitude of new modules and functions for the management of product data, development projects and engineering processes. This includes the unique CONCTACT Workspaces for collaborative design and CAD data management, Enterprise Search for extremely fast retrieval through the entire database, Mobile PDM and ad-hoc workflows. With Project Office, CONTACT also introduces far reaching innovations for its 360° project management module, such as the multi-project cockpit and a resources planning facility. Also included are elementary platform innovations such as the CIM DATABASE next generation multi-site solution. Altogether, the new release delivers its customers unprecedented gains in functionality, performance, adaptability and productivity.

The recently announced Workspaces technology constitutes CONTACT’s new, open architecture for CAD data management and collaborative product development. It radically simplifies product design for individual users, teams and partner networks. It enables efficient collaboration amongst designers without impairing compliance and data validity requirements within the company’s PLM backbone. Workspaces support a totally new collaborative approach with partners and sub-contractors, reducing costs and saving time.

Requirements on target driven project management are enormous, considering the complexity of today’s products and processes. With its integrated project, process and product projections, CONTACT’s Project Office enables structured collaboration across multiple disciplines, departments, domains and locations. The 360° perspective supports project management in real-time, trimmed to the specific demands of project managers, controllers and project teams. The now integrated Earned Value Analysis allows the compilation and presentation of concise data for controlling milestones, costs and work progression in real time. Project Office now supports hierarchical resource planning across a company’s overall project portfolio and resources, thus enabling optimal deployment of all world-wide distributed development capacities.

With Enterprise Search, CIM DATABASE 2.9.8 provides a new, straight forward interface for the combined full text and Meta data retrieval with exceptional performance and efficiency. The solution excels through its central, easy and fast access to all or ad-hoc selectable PDM object types such as documents, articles, projects, open issues etc. Enterprise Search enforces the company-wide access restrictions and delivers comprehensive search capabilities using wildcards, fuzzy search and drill down through freely combinable master data.

Furthermore, users profit from the new PowerReports by which data from within CIM DATABASE is extracted and graphically displayed for reporting and further processing into Excel or PDF. The now available Mobile Client enables users to freely select segments of the PDM database such as all relevant data along a complete project structure for subsequent offline-usage, including modifications and amendments. Typical examples are on-site engineering and support for travelling sales and service personnel or project managers. The novel ad-hoc Workflows render the compilation and activation of processes as easy as writing an e-mail. As a process control facility, CIM DATABASE monitors the workflow and selectively engages involved employees via its inbuilt task management. Furthermore, the new CIM DATABASE version supports single sign-on in ActiveDirectory and Kerberos environments.

“2.9.8 offers our customers a whole range of new and far-reaching product innovations which support them in an unprecedented way to develop products faster and on target” explains Frank Patz, head of software development with CONTACT. “We are convinced that the new release delivers numerous significant benefits for both users and companies.”