CADIS Legacy Processing services save manufacturers millions by leveraging existing part data; CADIS offers broadest classification part schema, patent-pending technology and services.

BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 9, 1995--CADIS, the leading supplier of part and vendor management systems, announced that the company's patent-pending Legacy Processing and Implementation Services have saved Fortune 500 companies millions of dollars by enabling them to eliminate duplicate parts and consolidate the number of outside suppliers.

Ongoing savings are equally compelling: the system guarantees that duplicate parts can no longer be released, resulting in significant ongoing cost savings and dramatic productivity gains.

CADIS is also the first company to introduce and implement a comprehensive set of consulting services focused on re-engineering the parts management process, from the early phases of design and procurement to an enterprisewide "closed loop" parts management system that delivers invaluable economic and strategic benefits. Today, CADIS's customers are industry leaders who have adopted innovative "Best Practices" parts management.

These customers include General Electric, which has a worldwide enterprise agreement with CADIS, and is using CADIS's Legacy Processing and Implementation Services across nine of its manufacturing divisions.

Other blue chip customers are 3M, Tektronix, General Signal, Scientific Atlantic, Lennox, Navistar, Johnson Controls, Marathon Electric, Applied Materials, Lexmark and Ingersoll-Rand. Most have recouped the return on their investment in the CADIS system in a matter of months.

Parts Process Re-engineering: Data Collection to "Closed Loop" Parts Management

CADIS's Legacy Processing Services are implemented in three distinct phases. The first is consolidation and conversion of all parts and vendor data sources across the enterprise.

CADIS uses an intelligent inference engine to interpret the often inconsistent, inaccurate and disparate parts data found in most manufacturing companies. This automated, artificial intelligence tool goes well beyond the more commonly used approach of importing data and manually correcting it to conform with standard expressions or terms. Data is transformed -- not just migrated from legacy systems -- to ensure that duplicate parts can be identified and eliminated.

"We put a great deal of emphasis on quickly, affordably and efficiently organizing existing parts data from multiple data sources across the enterprise," said Venkat A. Mohan, president and chief operating officer of CADIS.

"Manufacturers must be able to easily and quickly find out whether a given part, or an acceptable substitute, is available, and if it is not, only then consult their list of preferred or strategic vendors. This process is key to eliminating the uncontrolled proliferation of parts and vendors. And ultimately, fewer new parts released translates into reduced product costs, improved time-to- market, and significant competitive gain."

The second major step classifies all components into CADIS's comprehensive Parts Schema, the industry's broadest classification parts schema and the only one that incorporates both mechanical and electrical components and can easily be modified for the customer to include "custom" components and assemblies.

CADIS's Parts Schema contains more than 10,000 classes and sub-classes covering electrical, electromechanical, mechanical, materials, supplies and subassemblies, allowing it to easily and rapidly accommodate all legacy part information.

The third phase of CADIS's Legacy Processing involves the further classification of parts into class structures and the extraction of attribute values. CADIS's legacy tools assign parts to the lowest possible class in the Schema, which contains more than 500,000 attributes and several million attribute values, ensuring that duplicate and "like" parts are comprehensively identified.

During this stage, various refinement techniques are used to augment existing data, including supplementing incomplete parameters with supplier data, as well as creating custom schema to provide intuitive and instant access to custom components and sub-assemblies.

Once completed, customer data can be easily accessed and grouped by "like" parts, enabling companies to easily identify and retrieve existing related components and isolate opportunities to rationalize duplicate parts, and to consolidate purchases of duplicate and "like" parts from preferred suppliers.

Due to the power of CADIS's patent-pending legacy tools, this entire process takes four weeks or less. One CADIS customer, electronic products manufacturer Tektronix, estimated that it would have required 18 months of 10 engineers' time to accomplish this same data transformation using standard research and conversion tools that require significant manual input.

CADIS Implementation Services Deliver "Best Practices" Parts Management

CADIS Implementation Services include a broad range of consulting services that combine CADIS's powerful technology tools with expert implementation, resulting in a "best practices" parts and vendor management system. These services deploy CADIS on an enterprisewide basis, integrating the system into existing business processes, design practices and information systems. Significant competitive gains result through improved time to market and lower unit costs.

Tangible Business Benefits Increase Shareholder Value

The ability to instantly access existing part data by attribute, rather than relying on part number or text description, provides three powerful benefits: -0-

-- Immediate financial benefit of increased working

capital by identifying and eliminating duplicate part

numbers and consolidating purchasing.

Tektronix eliminated more than 30,000 active parts in

the past year using CADIS Parts Management. Conservative

estimates of savings were close to $10 million.

Sustained operation benefit of increased productivity

through part re-use and elimination of duplicate design

efforts.

-- Reduced "operational" costs by avoiding the release of

duplicates. Industry studies indicate the operational cost

to release a new part into a large manufacturing company

ranges from $5,000 to $50,000.

A leading consumer hard goods manufacturer is reducing

new part releases by 10% using CADIS Parts Management by

allowing engineers to instantly identify candidate parts

for new designs from the company's existing released

parts data -- saving more than $100 million in

operational costs over the next 15 years by their

estimates.

-- Long-term competitive advantage by shortening time to

market and decreased overhead.

Ingersoll-Rand estimates it will save weeks off the

design of some assemblies used in its machinery and

equipment by increasing part design re-use with CADIS

Parts Management, bringing products to market more

quickly and cost-effectively.

The CADIS Parts Management solution consists of three technologies that are the subject of patent-pending applications: 1) CADIS KBMS, an object-oriented structure and retrieval system; 2) CADIS Parts Schema, the industry's broadest classification parts schema and the only one incorporating a complete schema for mechanical, electrical, materials and supplies; and 3) CADIS Legacy Services, a breakthrough data processing service that allows customers to fully exploit existing part data residing in multiple systems across the enterprise without migrating or replacing existing systems.

CADIS Inc. is a privately held company established in 1991 to solve the very difficult problem of effectively controlling parts and vendor proliferation across the enterprise through the invention and application of new technology and services. For more information, contact CADIS at 303/440-4363; 303/440-5309 (fax); or 1909 26th St., Boulder, Colo. 80302. -0-

Note to Editors: CADIS is a registered U.S. Trademark CADIS Parts Management is patent-pending CADIS Legacy is a Service Mark of CADIS Inc. CADIS Legacy Processing Services and legacize process are Service Marks of CADIS Inc.

CONTACT: CADIS Inc., Boulder

Janet Eden-Harris, 303/546-5227

or

Mesa Communications

Jeanne Jalan, 505/897-7100

[e-mail]