CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

15 July 2004

Company News

DaimlerChrysler, Renault, Visteon and Caterpillar Become Latest Corporate Members of JT Open Initiative

UGS announced the addition of six new members to the JT Open initiative. Four new corporate members - automakers DaimlerChrysler and Renault, along with auto supplier Visteon and heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar - join an expanding list of global manufacturers already participating in JT Open. PLM software providers Theorem Solutions and Opticore have also signed-on, adding to the growing set of JT Open vendor members.

"The momentum and energy behind JT Open is encouraging," said Ed Miller, president of CIMdata. "Companies considering a PLM initiative need to adopt a clear strategy for interoperability or they will risk compromising their company's competitiveness. UGS' PLM Open business model has gained significant industry visibility, and represents UGS' strategy for helping companies leverage multiple technology investments to structure their collaborative product development environment."

As the newest corporate members of JT Open, DaimlerChrysler, Renault, Visteon and Caterpillar join a growing group of global manufacturers seeking to remove technology barriers in their product development processes.

"It is critical to the success of the automotive industry that we eliminate all impediments to productivity caused by incompatible technologies," said Ulrich Ray, Director Development MB Passenger Cars-Information Technology, IT-Processes and Standardization for DaimlerChrysler. "Open solutions based on generally accepted data formats will benefit all manufacturers and the JT Open initiative is helping to further this common objective."

"We applaud the JT Open initiative for promoting the concept of open technology to facilitate enhanced communication and collaboration in the global manufacturing industry," said Francois Pistre, IT executive for Renault. "We look forward to working with all of the JT Open members to improve open communication throughout our collective product lifecycle processes."

"Becoming a JT Open member makes good business sense for any manufacturer in the automotive industry," said Lorie Buckingham, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Visteon. "As the first major automotive supplier to join JT Open we are looking forward to working with the other members to help define collaborative processes around JT and to gain business value from its use."

Theorem Solutions and Opticore announced their respective status as JT Open vendor members in separate press releases distributed by each company earlier this year.

"The addition of these prestigious industry leaders to the already impressive list of companies participating in JT Open is further validation of the business value of this innovative initiative," said Bruce Feldt, vice president of Open Tools for UGS. "JT Open's growing momentum also serves as evidence that its unique industry partnership model can successfully unite diverse manufacturers and suppliers around an open forum for the benefit of the PLM industry."

JT Open is an initiative driven by global leaders that view PLM as a competitive advantage and have adopted the "JT" data format as a standard. JT is a common data format for enabling product visualization and information sharing between PLM software applications. The functionality and lightweight nature of JT technology makes it possible to view and share product data and interactive images worldwide, in real-time and throughout all phases of the product lifecycle.

Membership in JT Open is available to any and all end user corporations, independent software vendors (ISVs), academic institutions and non-profit industry organizations. In addition to the six new members announced today, initial JT Open members announced in November include UGS, General Motors, Ford, Mazda, PTC, Alias and Actify as well as academic members Brigham Young University, Technical University Darmstadt, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Michigan.

In addition, many other companies that derive indirect value from the initiative participate as JT Open advocates. JT Open advocates include HP, Intel, SAP, Tecnomatix, CIMx and Elysium.

Additional information about JT Open can be found at http://www.jtopen.com

 

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