Aprisa Releases Enhanced BOM-Cleansing and Component Research Tool for OEMs, EMS Providers and Component Suppliers.

Business Editors

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 27, 2003

Aprisa, Inc., a developer of concept-to-production software for the electronics industry, today announced availability of BOM Center 2.0 -- a bill-of-materials cleansing tool that automatically generates finalized BOMs, as well as offers component research resources for OEMs and EMS providers, and competitive intelligence and sales-conversion opportunities for component manufacturers and distributors.

For OEMs and EMS providers, BOM Center reviews, cleanses and generates validated BOMs -- eliminating hours and sometimes days of manual research and data entry for component engineers and buyers. By identifying alternatives for obsolete components before releasing their BOMs to suppliers for quotes, BOM Center saves OEMs and EMS providers significant time and money, and helps them speed their products to market. In addition, by giving them the ability to quickly and cost-effectively cleanse their own BOMs, BOM Center helps electronic-product manufacturers shorten quoting delays from their suppliers, as well as helps eliminate the supplier biases, which occur when suppliers cleanse their bills of materials.

For component manufacturers and distributors, BOM Center's cross-referencing capabilities enable suppliers to quickly locate their own alternatives to competitors' parts and uncover additional sales opportunities. Additionally, BOM Center's vast component database gives component suppliers broad market information and detailed competitive intelligence.

New features in BOM Center 2.0 include:

-- Importing and management of multi-level BOMs, which saves users time and effort spent reformatting subassemblies into separate BOMs

-- Cross-reference capabilities of Aprisa orderable part numbers to customer's internal part numbers, thereby allowing users to come full-circle on a BOM

-- Cross-reference capabilities to Qualified Manufacturer Lists (QML), which allows users to create QML lists for BOM scrubbing and automatically match to second source or functional equivalent parts on their line card

-- Multiple manufacturer-mapping capability, which will help users keep track of the manufacturers whose components they are searching for and to ensure that users find the correct orderable part numbers

-- Improved import/export capabilities, which will streamline BOM scrubbing and quoting by allowing users to use the same file for each step of the process

BOM Center 2.0 also has significant improvements to its scrubbing capabilities and, with the addition of new components in the Aprisa database, now has a scrubbing success average over 85%. One European distributor using BOM Center to service their customers recently experienced a 93% scrub success rate.

For EMS providers in particular, BOM Center's fast and efficient BOM-cleansing capabilities enable these companies to win more business by guaranteeing their customers faster quoting turnaround time, because they are able to present fully cleansed BOMs to their suppliers and win priority in the quoting queue.

"BOM Center reduces the amount of time I spend on verifying and/or completing BOM line data and scanning datasheets for correct and orderable part numbers -- which can be very tedious processes," said Jon Rinkenberger, a component engineer with EMS provider Sparton Electronics. "Also, BOM Center's manufacturer mapping function helps me ensure the correct parts are ordered from the correct manufacturer, which is critical when dealing with source-controlled components."

BOM Center utilizes StraightLine's XML component database, which contains detailed information -- an average of more than 30 attributes -- on more than 13 million active and passive orderable part numbers (OPNs) from more than 1,150 semiconductor and electronic components manufacturers. With Aprisa's patent-pending parametric and rule-based search technology, users can search the database for parts using complex attribute requirements (speed, memory, power consumption, etc.).

The StraightLine software suite is comprised of interoperable software modules offering an unbiased, comprehensive solution, which provides universal information for all customers. In addition to BOM Center, StraightLine modules include Discovery Center, for hardware engineers in the research and early design stages; Component Center, for engineers and buyers to source components; and Quote Center, for automating the quoting process.

The StraightLine technology accelerates customers' design time, time to production and time to market, automating time-consuming quote and procurement analysis while significantly increasing productivity. StraightLine also offers component suppliers a host of resources for increasing sales, improving competitive intelligence and deepening customer relationships -- including Component Center's second-source alternative search capabilities; Discovery Center's collaborative reference-design creation tools; and BOM Center's automated BOM scrubbing and component cross-referencing capabilities.

For more information about BOM Center or the other modules in the StraightLine suite, contact [e-mail], or call 866-277-4721.

About Aprisa, Inc.

Aprisa, Inc., a subsidiary of Pioneer-Standard Electronics, Inc., delivers intelligent solutions to the electronics industry through interoperable software, comprehensive databases, industry standardization and professional services. Leveraging patent-pending technologies, Aprisa's first product is a fully integrated suite of software solutions that speeds, improves and drastically reduces the costs of product development, from concept to production. For more information, visit www.AprisaInc.com.