APPLICATIONS

LONDON, ORACLE APPSWORLD -- Oracle Corp., the world's largest enterprise software company, today announced the availability of Oracle Advanced Product Catalog, expanding the collaboration tools available with Oracle's Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) applications. The new enhancements to Oracle's PLM applications help customers accelerate time-to-market, lower costs and produce higher quality products. Oracle's fully integrated PLM applications are part of the Oracle E-Business Suite, a complete set of business applications that enables companies to improve business processes, make more informed decisions and lower the total cost of ownership. Oracle's PLM applications were developed in conjunction with leading technology and manufacturing partners, including CH2M HILL, Honda Motorcycle, Pella Corporation, and Technip-Coflexip. Leveraging the partners' extensive experience developing complex products, facilities, and equipment, Oracle's PLM applications provide the most advanced set of tools based on a single global repository designed to manage products, components and projects through the entire lifecycle. "AMR Research has long felt that Oracle had all of the important ingredients to be competitive in PLM," said Kevin O'Marah in the AMR Research Alert, January 23, 2003. "With all of these (Oracle PLM) ingredients and a huge applications user base, particularly in manufacturing, Oracle looks set to compete for substantial new PLM business in 2003. ...Existing Oracle ERP users will find, as one large and respected high-tech manufacturer did last fall, that this PLM product is well worth investigating." A Centralized Global Catalog Oracle Advanced Product Catalog is the core of Oracle's PLM applications, centralizing all product and component information into a single global catalog so companies can improve reuse of components and intellectual capital, reduce costs and accelerate new product development. By centralizing product information, Oracle Advanced Product Catalog provides comprehensive and secure product visibility throughout the enterprise, to all other PLM applications, and to all authorized external parties. Oracle Advanced Product Catalog also serves as the common source of product information for all Oracle E-Business Suite applications that manage or access product information. Additionally, Oracle Advanced Product Catalog features role-based security, advanced parametric search capabilities and closed loop change management for reducing Engineering Change Order (ECO) cycle times and costs. Many companies including Pella Corporation, StatOil and Technip-Coflexip are currently using Oracle's PLM applications successfully. "For Pella, managing a product over its lifecycle means having access to a central and secure source of product information and a comprehensive set of collaboration tools," said Ken Bettger, director of Advanced Product and Process Engineering. "Because of our complex product configurations, we require an integrated system that brings together all areas of a business including supply chain management, customer relationship management, finance and human resources, so that product information is managed and leveraged across the enterprise." In addition to Oracle Advanced Product Catalog, Oracle's PLM applications include: -- Oracle CADView-3D -- Leverages Oracle's patented streaming technology to provide secure visualization and mark-up capabilities for 2-D and 3-D models, streamlining collaboration and information sharing beyond the traditional walls of engineering departments with key customers and suppliers; -- Oracle Project Management -- Provides project planning, tracking, budgeting and forecasting capabilities across the entire product lifecycle; -- Oracle Project Collaboration -- Allows project team members to efficiently report and track project status, publish status to all project stakeholders, including suppliers and design partners, and efficiently manage changes; -- Oracle Collaboration Suite -- Provides a suite of enterprise-class document management, messaging and collaboration applications that enable organisations to increase user productivity and service levels while reducing total cost of ownership; -- Oracle Sourcing -- Simplifies negotiation of supplier contracts with effective online collaboration to develop requirements, identify potential sources of supply and manage complex negotiations; -- Oracle Configurator -- Manages configuration rules for complex products and services, helping validate a company's choice of options and guiding them through the selling process. "As products become increasingly complex and project teams become more geographically dispersed, a near crisis situation occurs," said Kurt Robson, vice president and chief applications architect at Oracle. "Oracle's PLM applications go to the root of the problem: the fragmentation of product and project information. Oracle's PLM applications provide a single source of truth for product and component information while allowing companies to standardize and track all PLM project tasks and deliverables. With these tools helping to eliminate errors and speed the development process, companies can get products and services to market faster while at the same time improving quality and reducing costs." For additional information about Oracle's PLM applications, please visit Oracle during AppsWorld London on the exhibit floor at the ExCel Center. Conference attendees can also see Kurt Robson discuss the latest trends in product lifecycle management during his session, "The Path Towards Product Lifecycle Management" on Tuesday, 24 June, 2003, at 11:00 a.m.