CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
6 March 2006
Company News
UGS, A.T. Kearney Procurement Solutions and Tata Consultancy Services Launch Asian Sourcing Network (ASN )
A.T. Kearney Procurement Solutions, a global sourcing services firm, and UGS Corp launched an initiative designed to enable manufacturers to connect companies from low-cost countries to their global innovation networks through a first-ever joint solution of information technology, software and consulting services.
Calling the new joint solution the Asian Sourcing Network (ASN), the companies are teaming with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a leading information technology and engineering services organization, to open the first ASN center in Coimbatore, India. Through the ASN center, which the companies opened on March 4, the three companies will find, develop and on-board companies from low-cost countries from which manufacturers and their suppliers can electronically source engineered machine parts. ASN will provide companies with a perpetual local presence, which is critical to the success of low-cost country sourcing activity.
"Identifying and building effective long-term relationships with the right low-cost suppliers will be a distinguishing characteristic of leadership companies going forward," said Joseph Raudabaugh, President, A.T. Kearney Procurement Solutions. "Finding, developing and on-boarding these key suppliers and getting them fully embedded into supplier-partner networks is critical."
"ASN combines the extensive supplier research assessment and negotiation capabilities of A.T. Kearney with the collaboration, content exchange, and sourcing enablement of UGS technologies and the far reaching business experience and recognized quality services of TCS to offer low-cost country sourcing as a packaged solution," added Raudabaugh.
Maximizing Global Innovation Networks
ASN targets the increasing need for manufacturers to tie low-cost country suppliers into their global innovation networks to help reduce cost.
The new category-specific ASN center, focused on engineered machine parts, will include 100 dedicated collaboration workstations, engineering support and supplier development services. The center will initially target over 400 small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) that provide machining services.
"ASN represents a major step forward in enabling companies to leverage global innovation networks by establishing the local presence critical to the success of low-cost country sourcing activity," said Raj Khoshoo, Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, UGS. "The fusion of technology, services, content, data integration and best practices deployment is a logical extension for existing UGS Teamcenter customers. In addition, both existing and new customers will reap benefits including improved process coordination, reduced travel demands and radically enhanced supplier performance."
"This initiative by A.T. Kearney Procurement Solutions, UGS and TCS will enable the global manufacturing industry to achieve desegregation of their value chain and restructure their supply chain to include global suppliers based on the selection criteria of an optimum combination of capability and cost," said Dr. Ravi Gopinath, Vice President, Engineering and Industrial Services, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. "TCS' extensive understanding of the manufacturing industry puts it in a unique position to make this initiative a big success. TCS is committed to enhance the competitiveness of the manufacturing and SME sector in low-cost countries through supply network management and guiding continuous improvement cycles."
ASN focuses on addressing both classical sourcing needs, such as supplier identification, supplier assessment and evaluation, and sourcing negotiations, as well as providing for critical process and supplier management requirements, such as:
• Supplier participation through "global" collaboration to enable key operational processes, for example, quality monitoring, engineering changes, and inter-company teaming
• Supply market transparency in low-cost countries
• In-country engineering services support
• Technical capabilities mapped to support requirements-driven sourcing analytics
• Version control and tracking of all inter-company documents and communications
• Joint project management and issue tracking
• Configurable workflows and performance tracking About A.T. Kearney Procurement Solutions
A.T. Kearney Procurement Solutions provides comprehensive strategic procurement services to clients with needs that range from tactical cost savings to outsourced strategic sourcing services to complete procurement transformation. A.T. Kearney Procurement Solutions augments the strategic sourcing expertise of A.T. Kearney ( http://www.atkearney.com ), one of the world's largest management consulting firms. With a global presence that includes more than 60 offices in 37 countries, spanning major and emerging markets, A.T. Kearney provides strategic, operational, organizational and technology consulting and executive search services to the world's leading companies.
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