Intelligent Manufacturing € October € 1996 € Vol. 2 € No. 10

Sherpa Develops New PDM Technology

Sherpa Corp. (San Jose, Calif.) has begun working on an advanced product data management (PDM) digital mock-up, code-named Sherpa/Explorer. This technology will allow users to access and manage product information wherever it is stored or needed in the enterprise -- manufacturing, engineering, purchasing, finance, as well as among vendors and customers -- regardless of the source or supplier of the files. With Sherpa/Explorer, an authorized user, located anywhere, will be able to access, view and annotate any model, drawing or document supported by the Sherpa domain.

Typically, a company will have diverse types of data to manage -- CAD models, technical publications, MRP or ERP data, STEP-compliant data, and information stored in legacy PDM systems. Sherpa/Explorer will make all this data more easily accessible and manageable via the Internet and intranets. The goal is to provide integrated access to entire product information.

To further its technological reach, Sherpa has teamed up with ObjectLogic Inc. (San Diego, Calif.), which will provide the capability to accept data from different sources and then present it to the user in a simple, integrated fashion, using the extendability of object technology to accept data from different systems.

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