Genius Software, a company based in Amberg in Bavaria, is using the XML information
server, Tamino, in a project for the mechanical engineering company Mädler, which
produces drive units. The electronic business solution does its work at the heart of the
value-added chain. The aim is to accelerate and simplify business processes in the
business-to-business sector on a lasting basis and to significantly reduce the associated
costs. The Mädler group produces drive units and buys and sells parts for the mechanical
engineering industry.
The message of all the leading business consultants is clear: Only those who are
engaged in a process of continuously optimizing their value-added chain will have a chance
these days in an intensely competitive environment. Progressive companies therefore want
to link their customers and suppliers via the Internet to their existing materials
management system in order to avoid having to repeatedly edit an ordering transaction
manually. When a purchase order is entered in the materials management system, it ought to
result automatically in an incoming purchase order in the supplier’s system. And it
must be possible to process the acknowledgment sent by the supplier as an order
confirmation. It should also be possible to process purchase orders from foreign
subsidiaries or distributors, for which the company acts as a supplier.
But exacting customers expect even more of the future: in addition to a direct
connection for their systems they will very soon be demanding information on the
availability of a specific delivery quantity and the status of an order currently being
processed.
The fact that such ideas are more than just visions is demonstrated by the Amberg-based
company Genius Software GmbH & CO. KG in a pilot project it is carrying out jointly
with the consulting company Ernst & Young for the Mädler group, which produces drive
units in two manufacturing plants in Stuttgart and Hamburg and buys and sells parts for
the mechanical engineering industry.
The cornerstone of the redesign of the value-added chain is Tamino, Software AG’s
XML server. Genius Software is responsible for the IT infrastructure, with Ernst &
Young providing the management consulting.
Dramatic simplification and cost reduction with purchasing and sales on the Web
"As a branch of the capital goods industry, the mechanical engineering industry,
in which there are a large proportion of small and medium-sized companies, is
characterized by one particularly noteworthy feature: namely, significantly more than half
of the total business in goods and services is done with companies within the
industry," explains Gerhard Koelbl, Marketing Director of Genius Software GmbH &
CO. KG in Amberg. Company A purchases items from other mechanical engineering companies,
designs and manufactures new products using them and then sells them to other
manufacturing companies.
Every company involved in this chain of suppliers and customers needs both product and
CAD data. To take a simple example, the product data of a pneumatic cylinder includes
specifications of the diameter, the stroke and the add-on parts required. If a company
wants to install the cylinder in a newly developed machine, the CAD data is required as
well. Some mechanical engineering companies already provide this information on CD-ROM.
Manufacturing companies can thus view the product specifications in a catalog on CD-ROM or
the Web and then download and reuse the required CAD drawings. An inconvenience for the
user is that the different CD-ROMs that have to be installed on the application system
differ greatly from each other and may have very different navigation structures. Most
manufacturers have gone this far in using electronic information systems, but they are
still a long way away from being linked to the materials management systems of their
suppliers and customers.
In their pilot application with the Mädler group mentioned above, Genius Software
demonstrates how this kind of integration can be implemented. Since its establishment in
1984, Genius Software has developed into a company with activities that span the globe. It
operates with four international subsidiaries. With considerable expertise in the CAD
field and abundant Internet project experience, Genius is now focusing intensively on
e-business. The company now employs more than 120 people. Among Genius Software’s
most important fields of business are electronic business solutions for manufacturers of
mechanical engineering parts (web2cad data warehouse with XML server), PowerParts on Web
(CAD libraries of mechanical engineering parts on the Internet), which is available from
the online service for CAD designers and mechanical engineers at web2CAD.de, and the
programming of Internet systems.
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) plays a pivotal role in the pilot application. Roland
Lehle, who is responsible for data warehouse development at Genius Software, explains:
"XML plays the role of middleware in our company. We also considered using Corba
technology, but decided against it on the grounds that Corba is not only more expensive
but also proprietary. XML, on the other hand, provides a straightforward, transparent
means of managing data interchange between different systems." Lehle is also certain
that "without XML it is not possible to create generally accessible interfaces that
can be financed and maintained independently by small and medium-sized companies." As
a universal format for data interchange, XML permits the implementation of complex
networks of business processes between different manufacturers and dealers at a reasonable
cost.
Cost benefits of XML
Lehle estimates that the costs for a basic installation of an XML application are
around 50 percent of those of an EDI installation. The client is merely a Web browser,
which displays the data transferred. The costs per message sent are up to 60 percent lower
than those of EDI. One possible scenario might be as follows:
The availability of a certain quantity of a product at a supplier is queried by means
of XML. If a positive answer is received, the mechanical engineering company sends an XML
purchase order from its own ERP system to the supplier, whose materials management system
then automatically generates an order and sends back an XML order confirmation. Ideally,
it should also be possible to query the delivery status of an existing order.
On the technical side, two servers are installed in the mechanical engineering company.
One is a Linux server containing a firewall, possibly a mail server and a Web server. This
server is connected to the Internet and the second server, on which the Tamino
installation server is installed and runs under Windows NT; the NT server is connected to
the Linux server and the internal LAN.
The Linux server communicates with Tamino and the Internet. The communication of the
Internet browser with Tamino goes via the Linux server. In other words, queries are
identified by the Web server on the basis of the URL and forwarded to the Tamino
information server. The XML data received is then also forwarded by the Web server to the
client. No messages can be exchanged directly between the Internet and the LAN. A firewall
thus protects the application system against unauthorized access. On the basis of the data
received from the materials management system, Tamino creates XML pages that are sent to
the Web server. The XML pages can be accessed via the Internet.
Outlook
Genius Software currently uses XML to represent the mechanical engineering-related
product data in the data warehouse. In order to turn the vision into reality and drive
standardization efforts forward, Genius Software is now a member of the
Normierungsausschuss Sachmerkmale (NSM), a German committee concerned specifically with
the issue of data description and interchange.
Koelbl summarizes the experience gathered in the project thus far as follows: "We
will be adding Tamino to our product portfolio because those companies that provide their
customers with the latest product data most quickly will come out on top in their
respective industries. We need XML technology in order to achieve this and to simplify the
transfer of data between different systems. The Genius data warehouse in combination with
the XML server Tamino is therefore going to revolutionize business process integration
between companies in the mechanical engineering sector."
