Convergence Data Services - Data Management & Information Technology

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of our customers; we recognize that the success of our
customers, determines our success.

The resource center provides information to those people interested in hearing about other data engineering projects from relevant cases studies, articles and white papers. If you’re trying to convince your management to invest in these types of projects at your company; this material can be used to help build your case. Please visit frequently as new information will be published regularly.

Customers have used CDS’s software in a variety of ways including: replacing their i2-Aspect parts catalog solution, organizing direct materials to support strategic sourcing cost reduction initiatives or for cleansing and migrating data for enterprise systems implementations (PLM/ERP).

Case Study #1 - i2 Parts Catalog Replacement
Read how Convergence has replaced i2 Part Catalog systems for companies in the aerospace and electronics industries.

Case Study #2 - PLM Data Migration
Read how Convergence effectively migrates data for PLM and ERP systems for an oil and gas customer.

Case Study #3 - Sourcing Direct Materials
Read how Convergence is achieving significant cost savings by improving sourcing throughput of direct materials management systems for an appliance manufacturer.

Design for Retrieval V3.6 – most of the improvements in 3.6 can be found in the data developer module. The grid for entering data has been changed to a new grid that makes it easier to enter data or copy and paste data from other sources. Careful attention has been given to the handling of unit of measures as well. Some of our customers retrieve 10,000’s of items with many attributes in a single retrieval in data developer; we have introduced paging capabilities to allow this to happen in a matter of seconds. For our customers, the details of this release are covered in the 3.6 release notes.

SmartFind V3.6 – SmartFind has had some significant new features incorporated into it including: the ability to run queries with custom views, load list of part numbers (e.g. BOM's) and save your search queries as templates. Beyond the traditional search features SmartFind offers, these new features provide more creative ways for companies to search their engineering data. For those not familiar, custom views are SQL views that provide search results that can span several different item categories including: parts, sites, organizations, suppliers or documents in a single query. SmartFind 3.6 will be released in November for our Oracle database environment in addition to our SQL
database solutions.

Top 10 reasons why a company needs part meta-data
1. Enable re-use of an existing approved part versus recreating a new part
2. Properly define a part so it can be re-used
3. Manage the lifecycle of a part including providing current part status
4. Source more parts at once, enabling similar part groupings or sourcing clusters
5. Identify standard part configurations facilitating part standardization and rationalization
6. Properly migrate a part to mitigate migration issues
7. Find part substitutes including preferred alternatives
8. Parts preferencing to help prioritize part usage
9. Find associated data about a part including where used, documents, programs, etc.
10. Pre and Post merger acquisition - consolidate parts and sourcing

Top 10 capabilities of a part meta-data management system
1. Agnostic meta-data system that manages data amongst multiple systems
2. Multi-user collaborative capabilities to easily manage concurrency
3. Project management including: data life-cycles, approval workflow and status reporting
4. Database for one version of the truth (no spreadsheets or access files)
5. Data cleansing tools to clean data that can support outsourced data engineering
6. Data validations that are easy to set-up, identify and fix data errors
7. Flexible taxonomy management for managing change promoting low maintenance
8. Robust security model to manage access via taxonomy
9. Intuitive application to make easy to use for engineers not IT
10. Scalable to handle millions of parts and 100's of concurrent users

Top 10 criteria for implementing a successful part meta-data program
1. Subject matter experts must own taxonomy not an IT responsibility
2. Part taxonomy must support multiple business needs not just engineering
3. Search engines must support classification and attributes meta-data searching
4. Integrate with other systems including PLM and ERP
5. Cross-functional executive sponsorship serving multiple business objectives
6. Data model changes as the business changes, maintaining relevance
7. Support key business initiatives: re-use, rationalization and sourcing
8. Meta-data system must be agnostic not an enterprise solution side offering
9. Accessible to the entire organization, not a point solution
10. Configurable to meet cross industry business needs

Top 10 common failures with part meta-data initiatives
1. Meta-data architecture too rigid to manage change
2. Relying on a PLM system to manage meta-data
3. IT driven program versus business drive creates lack of ownership
4. Single user system versus collaborative
5. Meta-data system set up for a one time use, not supporting iterative process
6. Not supporting multi-functional business needs
7. Addressing meta-data issues post migration, resulting in data sync issues
8. Not an agnostic meta data system architecture
9. Meta-data structure lacks detail to support re-use, generic commodity categories
10. Meta-data architecture lacks standard structure for common purchased parts

February 2008
Convergence Data Services is featured as the lead article of John Stark's
2PLM (Feb 11th 2008 edition) e-newsletter "Top 10 Reasons why a Company
needs Part Meta-data"

November 2007
First production release of Convergence’s new search engine called SmartFind for Whirlpool and Boeing Convergence customers.

The Value of Good Product Data
By Richard Turner
May 2008 | Convergence Data Services

This white paper discusses how a companies product data can be converted into a strategic asset utilizing Convergence's tools and methodologies.

The Product Complexity Conundrum
By Chloe Barzey and Robert Forrest
Feb 2008 | Accenture

This white paper discusses (CMS) Component and Material Standardization. A
successful CMS initiative will allow companies to minimize complexity while
still providing differentiated products to their customer.

Data migration evolves from scripts to software
By Hannah Smalltree, Site Editor
04 Dec 2007 | SearchDataManagement.com

This article discusses the trend from migrating data with custom scripts to using
formal applications to do the job today. Rob Karel of Forrester Research recognizes
the fatal flaw of custom scripts inability to do anything about bad data during migration.

Designing a Data Storage Systems for Environmental Compliance
(November 2007)
Krista Botsford, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of 5-Trees LLC

This white paper focuses on how to store and organize compliance data as
well as what a company should look for in a compliance data tracking system.

Reduce program costs through parts management (February 2007)
Researched and written by the parts standardization and management committee.

This document describes how much money a company can save if they have put in place an effective parts management process. In addition to saving money it also talks about other business benefits including: reliability, performance, schedule and managing obsolescence problems.

Integrated Part Information Management (May 2006)
INFOSYS – Jagmeet Singh and Asish Kumar Tewary

This white paper discusses the importance of part information to help bridge that gaps across engineering, supply chain and manufacturing.

Attribute-Enriched Data is Critical for Supply Chain Collaboration
(November 2003)
Upstream CIO – Virgil Vincent Weatherford International and Richard Turner
Convergence Data Services Inc.

This article discusses the importance of quality data and how it drives your business operations including: strategic sourcing, supplier collaboration and spend analytics.
This article also describes in detail the approach Weatherford has taken in producing quality data.