The Boeing Company Wins Progressive Manufacturing 100 Award for Implementing PARTsolutions 3D Part Catalog Management Software

Milford, OH – May 12, 2011 – PARTsolutions, LLC, a global provider of 3D part catalogs for manufacturers and enterprises, announced today that The Boeing Company has been selected as a winner of Managing Automation Media’s seventh annual Progressive Manufacturing 100 (PM 100) Awards for its implementation of its PARTsolutions 3D Part Catalog Management Software. Honored in the Innovation Mastery category, judges concluded that Boeing has achieved a breakthrough in product concept, design production or ability to deliver to customers.

The Boeing Company was honored for its technology project, “Product Standards as Digital Data (PSDD),” a large-scale multi-tiered program designed to transform product standards–including specifications for standard parts, materials, manufacturing processes, design standards and tooling–from documents to technically rich digital data, delivered in multiple forms but controlled from a single source. Results of the project include an estimated $20M annually saved in first-time manufacturing quality, as well as a significant reduction in document publication libraries and CAD model libraries.

The Product Standards as Digital Data project accomplished the following:

• Developed a method for defining and controlling the configuration of product standards in digital (non-document) forms
• Developed methods to publish multiple forms of product standards data (CAD models in multiple CAD vendor formats, databases, catalogs, documents, PDM item masters, and interactive process specifications) from a single source of data
• Implemented production systems to support these new methods of defining and publishing product standards
• Converted over 100,000 documents to digital XML format
• Consolidated nine company document libraries for product standards into one single enterprise library
• Standardized the document formats of eight different product standards collections into a single common format
• Retired over 30 applications for authoring and publishing product standards data into a single enterprise suite of tools.

“This prestigious award validates the ways in which our technology delivers staggering return on investment,” said Tim Thomas, CEO of PARTsolutions. “The business value to Boeing is measured both in both substantial cost savings and greater innovation.”

PARTsolutions 3D part catalog management software enables centralized, global access to proprietary, commercial, and standards based 3D parts, which are configurable in any CAD-native format with all associated attribute information to ensure fast part access, reuse, and compliance. PARTsolutions geometric search and compare technologies have been implemented and are being utilized in design reuse scenarios on various programs to reduce the introduction of duplicate parts to achieve dramatic cost savings. PARTsolutions is the only CAD-Native 3D part catalog management solution designed to preserve 3D standard part catalog content independent of CAD system or CAD version, thereby enabling 3D standard part catalog stability for current and future engineering design environments so designers can find approved standard parts faster with reduced costs.

An independent judging panel chaired by David R. Brousell, Editor-in-Chief, and Jeff Moad, Executive Editor, of Managing Automation, reviewed project nominations. Judges included:

• Lisa Bodell, CEO, futurethink
• David R. Brousell, Editor-in-Chief, Managing Automation
• Steve Bloomfield, Director of Manufacturing IT Systems, Freescale Semiconductor
• Julie Fraser, President, Cambashi
• Bill Bradfield, Director of IT, Interior Concepts
• Tim Hanley, Vice Chairman and U.S. Process & Industrial Products Leader, Deloitte & Touche LLP
• Brad Heath, President, VirTex Assembly Services, Inc. (2009 PM100 winner)
• Stephen Huffman, Vice President, Strategic Accounts, Mead O’Brien, Inc.
• Larry Lapide, Research Affiliate, MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics
• George Nickel, Director, Global Manufacturing Process, Johnson & Johnson
• Robert Parker, VP, Research, Manufacturing Insights
• Sath Rao, Research Director, Industrial Automation & Process Control, Frost & Sullivan USA (Texas)
• Ben Sommerville, Chief Operating Officer, Phoenix Logistics
• James Sourges, VP, Manufacturing Automotive Sector, Capgemini

The PM100 Winners will be honored and presented with their awards at the Progressive Manufacturing Awards Gala to be held on the last day of the Manufacturing Leadership Summit 2011, “NO LIMITS: The Value-Added Resolution” at The Breakers in Palm Beach, FL this week. More than 200 manufacturing technology executives are expected to attend.