InformationWeek

August 14, 2000

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Business-To-Business Apps Provide Quick Data Access

Agile's Electronic project Management speeds business cycles and allows dynamic changes

By Mitzi Waltz

More on supply chains:

Computer Reseller News Worldchain Asks: Why Can't We All Just Get Along? (7/3/00)

Computer Reseller News Study: Businesses Want A More Efficient Supply Chain (6/12/00)

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pplying Internet savvy to business-to-business applications has been a successful strategy for supply-chain automation software vendor Agile Software Corp. Agile's supply-chain automation product, Agile Anywhere, and its procurement application, Agile Buyer, have given the manufacturer a high profile. That reputation is attracting attention--and contracts--from companies in the electronics and medical-supplies industries.

PairGain Technologies Inc., which was recently acquired by ADC Telecommunications Inc. in Minneapolis, Minn., manufactures digital subscriber line networking systems in Tustin, Calif. It realized a major improvement after dropping its engineering documentation and bills of materials into a "totally vanilla" version of Agile Anywhere, says Gary Lenik, PairGain's director of materials. Although the new database is continually revised and expanded, building it took only a couple of weeks, since custom programming wasn't required.

Now, engineers at PairGain and the company's outside manufacturing partners can pull up specs, make permitted changes, and contact parts and materials suppliers--knowing that what they do will be seen by the product team. "It used to take us a couple of weeks to manage a change of activity, but now our engineers and our suppliers are linked into Agile Anywhere, and it only takes 24 to 48 hours," Lenik says. "We all know cycle time is money and, at least administratively, our change time is improved by more than 10 days."

What's more, before PairGain used Agile Anywhere, it took so long for information about changes to reach the purchasing department that several times the company was stuck with unwanted inventory--another expense the company can now avoid.

Gary Lenik Photo by Nick Souza Agile Anywhere includes a set of sharable online databases with customizable interfaces, a portal app, and a scalable Windows NT hub that provides platform-independent data access to suppliers and partners. The software stores detailed information about parts and processes from multiple sources in the Product Definition Exchange (PDX) standard and exports descriptions in the Extensible Markup Language format.

Companies and their partners and suppliers can tap into this data over an intranet or the Internet to manage the design and manufacturing process. The program generates bills of sale, approved parts and vendors lists, product information sheets, and other reports, and it permits dynamic changes. It works with most enterprise resource planning systems, including those from Oracle Manufacturing, Oracle Engineering, SAP R/3, and J.D. Edwards' OneWorld and WorldSoftware. Custom interfaces can be developed by scanning existing paper forms and converting them to screens using the Agile Scan feature.

Agile Buyer automates receiving material from suppliers by generating requests for quotes, contracts, and lists of approved suppliers, and by helping manufacturers manage complex price negotiations. Users can send out requests for quotes by the hundreds. As responses come back, the bids are entered on one form for easy comparison. Agile Buyer also helps companies that are making new products because they can use its database of past parts prices to generate new estimates.

For Dell Computer, stellar presale customer service and dedication were Agile's keys to winning a head-to-head battle between Agile Anywhere and another collaborative manufacturing commerce system, Windchill, from Parametric Technology Corp. in Waltham, Mass. Mammoth manufacturers such as Dell rely on hundreds of outside suppliers and partners. When Dell decided to replace its aging proprietary system with something faster and more flexible, director of operations and configuration management Mike Pizinger consulted several industry analysts. "We said, 'Give us the top players,' and they thought Agile and PTC were the best, based on our operation," he says.

So Dell set up a battle between Agile and PTC, with a multimillion dollar contract as the prize. "Whoever we purchased from, their ability to deploy the software in a rapid, successful fashion was a top priority," Pizinger says. "We really liked Agile's attitude from the beginning. Our pilot had an aggressive six-week schedule, and we paid no money to either company, but Agile didn't miss any milestones."

Dell's expectations were so demanding that PTC dropped out of the competition after two weeks--but Dell didn't throw the match to Agile, Pizinger says. "So Agile didn't think they'd get the contract just for showing up, we told them we were reassessing our internal tools," he says. "By the sixth week, they were actually managing ECO [engineering change order] part-number requests live on the system--and we were impressed."

That said, Pizinger admits that no system is perfect for a company whose product line is as large and changing as Dell's. "Agile's software isn't a panacea for all the problems we have," he says. But he notes that Agile has continued to work closely with Dell during the six-month ramp-up to full deployment and has listened to Dell's pleas for focus and simplicity.

"We were afraid we'd get into 'scope creep'" by customizing an off-the-shelf package, Pizinger says, referring to the familiar phenomenon in which people want to add features to an off-the-shelf product, leaving the final package too bloated to work. Instead, says Pizinger, his team focused on getting Agile Anywhere 6.0 up and running. "We know there are areas where there might be more elegant solutions; in fact, we've already made a list of issues that aren't mission-critical. Early next year, Agile will debut 7.0, and they've already started adding those functions," he says.

Photo by Gary Parker Bryan Stolle, Agile's chairman and CEO, says landing a big fish such as Dell proves that his company is responding to an unmet need. "The average Agile customer makes 600 changes in product data every week--that's more than 60 changes a day going into your supply chain," he says. If a company's cost and purchasing system can't keep pace, the result can be excess inventory, missed production, and higher product costs. And with most major companies looking outside the organization for manufacturing today, those kinds of delays and cost overruns can spell disaster.

Stolle says, and industry analysts agree, that his company anticipated the dominant trends of short product life cycles, globalization, and contract manufacturing and designed products to fit those needs. "In the past, everything happened between the four walls of the company," he says. "You'd just run down the hall and ask the engineers or someone in materials management when you wanted a new product or a change." Today, companies must cope with far-flung networks of suppliers and factories, usually with different owners and often with contractors sitting in the middle. Agile's products can help companies share information, such as product specifications and approved sources for off-the-shelf parts.