SofTech, Inc. News
E-ONE Selects SofTech’s ProductCenter Collaborative PDM On Strength to Support Mixed CAD Environment
ProductCenter™ Tight Integrations with Pro/Engineer and AutoCAD Will Unify Design Environment to Enhance Engineering Process, Part, and Quality Standardization Company-wideTEWKSBURY, Mass., July 23, 2003 — SofTech, Inc. (OTCBB: SOFT), a leading provider of design-through-manufacturing productivity solutions, announced that its ProductCenter ™ collaborative product data management (PDM) solution has been selected by E-ONE, a Federal Signal Corporation company, and leading manufacturer of fire rescue vehicles for fire departments, rescue/emergency medical service squads and airports.
On why ProductCenter was chosen over other competitive solutions, particularly over other PDM solutions that support Pro/Engineer, Tom Smith, Director of Applied Technology at E-ONE stated, “We chose ProductCenter on the strengths of its integrations to Pro/Engineer and AutoCAD, its ease of use, and history of rapid deployment. In particular, the Pro/E models we use to design our vehicles are highly complex, intelligent models, linked to fabrication. Managing these models, I believe, and especially with my previous experience with two previous PDM deployments, was going to be a problem with the other data management solutions we looked at.”
E-ONE will utilize ProductCenter’s collaborative PDM capabilities including ProductCenter™ Workflow, ProductCenter™ GenView, and the ProductCenter™ Pro/Engineer Integrator and ProductCenter™ AutoCAD Integrator. ProductCenter will provide centralized access to these design resources and automate the company’s engineering change request/engineering change order and approval processes. ProductCenter replaces a homegrown directory-oriented document management system that lacked workflow automation, email notification, and other key features needed to support E-ONE’s highly customized product design and manufacturing environment. Plans are also to extend ProductCenter use to two additional companies in Federal Signal’s Fire and Rescue Group.
ProductCenter will provide very intuitive Web access to all product data throughout the Fire and Rescue Group companies, eliminating the typical end user learning curve and enabling much faster methods of data retrieval, which is expected to significantly increase design reuse. Long term, the goal is to integrate suppliers and resellers into the ProductCenter system as well.
“ It’s our organization’s responsibility to implement consistent, standard tools and engineering practices across the Fire and Rescue Group, with a goal of continued process improvement. When users at the three companies can easily find, access, and share major truck components, systems, and chassis, and manage changes to these items without stepping on each other’s toes, the benefits gained with ProductCenter in terms of time and cost savings and customer responsiveness are expected to be considerable.”
About Federal Signal Corporation
Federal Signal Corporation is a global manufacturer of leading niche products in four operating groups: environmental vehicles and related products, fire rescue vehicles, safety and signaling products, and consumable industrial tooling. Based in Oak Brook, Illinois, the company’s shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol FSS.
About SofTech
SofTech, Inc. (OTCBB: SOFT) provides design-through-manufacturing productivity solutions with its computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) and product data management (PDM) products including CADRA®, DesignGateway™, Prospector™, and ProductCenter™ (through SofTech’s Workgroup Technology Division). SofTech’s solutions optimize product lifecycle management at the lowest cost by fostering innovation, extended enterprise collaboration, product quality improvements, and compressed time-to-market cycles.
SofTech has more than 100,000 users benefiting from its solutions, including Boeing, FlightSafety International, General Electric Company, Goodrich Turbine Fuel Technologies, Honeywell, Millipore Corporation, Siemens, Sikorsky Aircraft, U.S. Army, and Whirlpool Corporation.
Headquartered in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, SofTech (www.softech.com) has locations throughout North America and Europe.
SofTech, CADRA, DesignGateway, ProductCenter and Prospector are trademarks or registered trademarks of SofTech, Inc., in the U.S. and/or other countries. SofTech is a trademark of SofTech, Inc. All other brands, logos, products or company names are the copyrights and/or trademarks of their respective holders.
