Collaborative Enterprise Sourcing

Collaborative Enterprise Sourcing (CES) is a software product in Dassault Systemes' Enovia V5 PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) line. The CES software was developed in cooperation with i2, a maker of supply-chain management software.
Product Life cycle
Any entity, be it a business, manufactured good or a software application, has a lifecycle. The typical phases of a lifecycle include:
* Conception
* Design
* Manufacturing or Fabrication
* Service or Maintenance
* Disposal or Obsolescence
In manufacturing businesses across the aerospace, automotive, shipbuilding and consumer goods industries, managing data and information about products fabricated in an enterprise is crucial to achieving common business objectives of low production cost and lesser product development cycle time.
Interaction of phases
In a typical industry scenario, the design and service phases in the product lifecycle work closely with the process of buying" or procuring raw materials, parts, components and tools. The time lag between the end of the Design phase and the beginning of the Manufacturing phase involves the process of "Sourcing". The sourcing process consists of iterative negotiations between the design team and the sourcing department in a manufacturing enterprise. An attempt is made to strike a perfect balance between the "Design For Supply" and "Supply For Design" approaches. This takes up to 30% of the entire product development cycle time and can be a crucial factor for the success of any manufacturing business, especially when a new product is being introduced into the market.
The Collaborative Enterprise Sourcing (CES) software attempts to simplify the repetitive, time-consuming negotiations between design and sourcing teams. This simplification is done by providing cross-functional comprehensive sourcing capabilities right at a design engineers desk. <ref name="V5 CES brochure"/>
Advantages
Though the pre-requisite here is a merger of the sourcing and design teams, the concept empowers an enterprise with the following advantages:
* Lesser Time-to-Market
* Production Cost Optimization
* Improved Product Quality
* Better Re-use of Engineering and Sourcing Data
* A seamless integration of all phases in a product's lifecycle that involve Sourcing, enabling better collaboration and faster decision-making.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu