Taking a cue from the rising importance of search capabilities in desktop applications, Centric Software Inc. acquired a small company this week in an effort to bring Google-like search functions to its OpenPLM product development and program execution platform. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Centric's software, designed to complement existing PLM and ERP systems, provides business intelligence, dashboard functions, and connectivity capabilities in an effort to deliver visibility into product-related information tucked away in disparate systems. The newly acquired Product Sight Corp.'s FindView program works in a Google-like fashion to offer high-level search and classifications features, allowing a broad array of users to more intuitively perform intelligent searches on structured or unstructured data.
By eventually combining the products into a single platform, Centric will allow users to tap into product-related data stored in multiple MCAD, EDA, CAE, PDM, ERP, SCM, and document-management systems by creating pre-defined reports, but also by performing ad hoc searches. Adding FindView to the mix will also allow Centric's customers to perform data-mining activities on unstructured information housed in emails or Word documents.
The value of such a tool is critical for manufacturers today, Centric officials maintain, given the challenges associated with information overload coupled with the demands for faster time-to-market and increased product innovation. "Now with OpenPLM, customers can search for, mine, and merge critical pieces of information and present the information in the context needed for truly informed decisions," said Chris Groves, CEO of San Jose, CA-based Centric, in a prepared statement.
Unlike PLM platforms, which serve as the backbone for collecting and controlling product-centric data, Centric's system provides off-the-shelf connectivity among a manufacturer's disparate systems, allowing users to aggregate the data and then refine and analyze it using Centric's set of product-intelligence applications. As such, manufacturers can create pre-defined reports that deliver timely answers to such common questions as "Is the company on schedule?"; "What are the current issues?"; and "What needs to be done?" Without such a system, manufacturers typically cobble together spreadsheets and other pieces of information to find the answers, and oftentimes, they're working with outdated information.
"With Centric's OpenPLM approach, you don't have to completely change your business practices in order to get better visibility and leverage information to make key decisions," explained Bruce Winegarden, now vice president of consumer electronics for Centric and formerly the CEO of the Bellevue, WA-based Product Sight. "Everything is equal -- it doesn't matter where [the data] resides. The Centric architecture provides facilities to drive product intelligence with data remaining where it is today."
The acquisition not only brings to Centric an enterprise intelligent search tool (now renamed Centric InSight), but software that collects global part and BOM (bill of material) master data from multiple sources of interrelated product data, while maintaining the data integrity for the different BOMs. The product, known as MultiSight BOM, is useful to manufacturers that maintain different BOMs for different purposes such as multiple manufacturing plants, test validation, and to track variations between as-ordered and as-built states.
The synergies between Centric and Product Sight, technologically and philosophically, make the acquisition a good fit, said Ed Miller, president of market researcher CIMdata Inc., in Ann Arbor, MI. "Search is hot and it's so consistent with what Centric is trying to do," Miller said in an interview with Managing Automation. "Giving the [Centric] platform a Google-like function will help customers mine data much more effectively."
Still, there are challenges -- the major one being to convince manufacturing organizations of the importance of bankrolling yet another enterprise platform on top of their existing PLM and ERP investments. "When you get into ERP or PLM or any enterprise system, there are generally [advocates] for those systems that believe they can do everything," Miller explained. "The battle for Centric is to demonstrate they're not fighting what those systems are doing, but rather trying to provide an additional facility on top of that."
Although Centric didn't disclose Product Sight's size in terms of revenues or customer count, the acquired company's website lists Alcoa, Delco Remy, Delphi, Ford Motor Co., and TRW as customers. With the deal complete, Product Sight's six employees have accepted positions with Centric, but will continue to work from the acquired company's Bellevue facility.
While there will be on-going integration efforts to create closer ties between the products, Centric InSight and MultiSight BOM are available immediately as additional modules to the Centric suite.
Centric has also established two new positions in the acquisition's aftermath. In addition to Winegarden's new vice president role, in which he oversees sales in the critical consumer electronics vertical, Ravi Rangan, Product Sight's chief technology officer, assumes that role with Centric.