How do large companies with 500 to 30,000 engineers manage their product development organization? How do managers and engineers find peers with specific skill sets to avoid reinventing wheels that have already been designed? How do they ensure that necessary administrative processes are being followed, and keep track of the countless interactions and deliverables between project teams?
"There really hasn't been anything out there for handling enterprise engineering management," says Rob Vonderhaar. "There is PeopleSoft for human resources and SAP for finance, but nothing comprehensive for the engineering department, until now," he adds.
Vonderhaar is the vice-president of marketing for Intersect Software. The start-up company is readying the release of its new enterprise engineering management (EEM) software that it says addresses these problems while delivering the first complete operational history for the engineering function.
The goal is to help engineers bring new products to market faster by improving their efficiency. "It includes an engineering yellow pages for easy identification and communication with people having specific skills or experience," says Vonderhaar. "It also automates mundane administrative tasks, freeing engineers to be engineers."
The EEM software manages information sharing among product development teams and across team boundaries, and is currently being tested by several companies with large engineering organizations. The product is planned for release by the end of the year. For more information, e-mail [email protected] or visit www.intersectsoft.com.