Oracle Adds PLM Capabilities

Oracle Corp. is shipping new product lifecycle management software offerings with enhanced capabilities for managing projects.

Oracle Advanced Product Catalog expands the collaboration tools available with the Redwood Shores, Calif., companys Oracle PLM software. Oracle has also made available additions to its Project Management family of applications, which work in conjunction with the PLM software.

All the products were announced at the Oracle AppsWorld conference in London last week.

Part of Oracles E-Business Suite, the expanded PLM functions include Advanced Product Catalog, which centralizes all product and component information into a single, global catalog. Also included are new functions for role-based security, advanced parametric search capabilities and closed-loop change management for reducing the engineering change order cycle.

Advanced Product Catalog is at the core of Oracles PLM applications that also include Oracle CADView-3D, which provides visualization and markup capabilities for two- and three-dimensional modules. Other applications in the suite include Oracle Project Management, Project Collaboration, Collaboration Suite, Sourcing and Configurator.

Project Collaboration allows team members to report and track a projects status; publish the status to all project members, including suppliers and design partners; and manage changes, Oracle officials said. Sourcing simplifies negotiation of supplier contracts via online collaboration, while Collaboration Suite provides document management, messaging and collaboration applications. Configurator manages configuration rules for complex products and services.

Bryce Renaud, engineering information supervisor at Pella Corp., is using Oracles Configurator to generate configured BOMs (bills of materials).

“We generate the BOM from rules within the Configurator, right down to the right components to build that order,” said Renaud, in Pella, Iowa. “We have visions to use the Catalog so that we have the abilities for common attributes and common parts. We are using descriptive elements today. We have a common place [that the elements] can be used, and we use [them] extensively. But for drop-down lists and value sets, this [Catalog] will give us a lot more control over attributes.”

Separately, Oracle en- hanced the Project Collaboration and Project Intelligence modules of its Project Management offering. Project Collaboration helps internal and external team members collaborate. Project Intelligence delivers a daily summary of key project metrics, including revenue, cost, margin, bookings, backlog and utilization.