In the electronic industry, the collaboration with external partners is essential. An electronic product consists of so many complex parts that it is difficult for one company to hold and maintain the competences required to consistently develop and manufacture innovative products with cutting edge technology.
This means that many electronic and high tech companies are reliant on external partners in order to get their products on the market. These external collaborator functions cover design partners, manufacturing partners, software developers etc. This makes it extremely important to be able to share data quickly in order to collaborate on designs and to communicate and validate changes to the product.
Sharing data is always a challenge and often is a tradeoff between security and flexibility. With the Electronic-PLM solution it is possible to grant access to a set of set of parts, products and documents easily and in a secure manner. Through the Permissions Manager, the user is able to select a certain set of data, and only this data, that the external user should have access to and makes this available in a couple of minutes. Also just as important as being able to grant access, is the ability to revoke the access, and this can also be done within minutes. The access can be revoked on all the data an external user has access to, or a just a set of data.
The Electronic-PLM solution is also prepared for collaboration in the change management process where the external partner can create ECR's, and participate in the ECO process to, for example, validate the manufacturability of the new version of the product.
Being able to push the PLM system out to the extended supply chain, whilst still maintaining a high level of security in order to protect the IP, is essential for the electronic and high tech industry and therefore one of the focus points of the Electronic-PLM solution.