CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
6 November 2008
Implementation Investments
Ford Motor Company Selects Endeca to Help Reduce Materials Costs, Consolidate Parts Across Car Platforms
Endeca Technologies, Inc., announced that Ford Motor Company, has selected and deployed Endeca’s Spend Analysis solution, built on the Endeca® Information Access Platform (IAP). Launched in late summer 2008, the solution supports a corporate initiative to reduce direct material costs and identify opportunities for parts consolidation and efficiencies for existing and new vehicle programs. The Endeca solution integrates data from more than seven different source systems. These include purchasing, finance, supplier, engineering, and part catalog applications, offering sourcing professionals 360-degree visibility of part and supplier related data. The solution will also serve to improve collaboration between engineering and sourcing professionals by offering first-of-their-kind tools to evaluate the complex tradeoffs that occur during the new product design process. As a result, key decision makers have immediate access to information that had previously taken weeks or even months to gather and analyze.
The new Endeca application – which combines search, business intelligence and Guided Navigation® capabilities into a single experience – powers Ford’s Global Commodity Hub, a portal which offers one-stop access to parts, program, supplier, technical attribute, and cost target data.
“Ford offers a great example of how information visibility can be used to create new operational efficiencies and competitive advantage in the face of shifting consumer demand and new economic realities,” said Steve Papa, CEO of Endeca. “Manufacturers are among the most information rich of all enterprises, but the ultimate value of this information remains limited by legacy systems that were never architected for such integration, exploration and discovery. We are now witnessing the beginning of a shift to a whole new class of information architecture that will unlock this latent value.”
Ford Motor Company joins a growing list of discrete manufacturing companies, including Boeing, John Deere, Harris Corporation, and LG Electronics, who rely on Endeca’s Manufacturing solutions for business-critical strategic sourcing, engineering, warranty and supply chain initiatives. These organizations are using Endeca to create applications that bring together data from numerous source systems and provide information visibility and access benefits not possible through legacy search, business intelligence, database or packaged enterprise applications.
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