CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

13 March 2006

Product News

Agile Announces Agile Product Compliance Management for Small and Medium Enterprises

Agile Software Corporation introduced Agile Product Compliance Management, a solution that enables small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to manage complex global regulatory requirements. Building upon its leadership and expertise in dealing with environmental compliance on the enterprise side, Agile Product Compliance Management was designed specifically for SMEs, and provides SMEs with an affordable solution that is easy to implement and manage without increasing IT overhead.

Agile Product Compliance Management is one of many new solutions added to Agile AdvantageT 2006, Agile's new and expanded PLM solution for SME customers. Agile Product Compliance Management enables SMEs to market their products and compete in global markets by tracking of material and substance information concurrently against multiple compliance directives and environmental regulations for each specific product. Today's SMEs face a growing amount of increasingly stringent environmental regulations around the world. Environmental mandates such as the European Union's Restrictions of the Use of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and Waste Electrical and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) have proliferated worldwide as large corporations, the state of California, and even China implement similar standards. Product manufacturers who fail to comply must pay significant penalties or risk the loss of sales by exclusion from certain markets.

For SMEs, regulatory compliance management imposes a disproportionate burden. With smaller IT staffs and leaner budgets, SMEs cannot afford the additional burden of compliance management solutions. And while many SMEs contemplate manual solutions, such approaches are mistake-prone, slow the pace of innovation, and often fail to stand up to environmental audits.

"As an industry pioneer in the highly technical and rapidly advancing WiMAX market, tools such as Product Compliance Management enable us to design for compliance," explains Scott Woodworth, senior vice president of manufacturing and operations, SOMA Networks. "By incorporating environmental compliance at the design stage, we can ensure that our products meet the latest regulatory specifications, eliminating costly hardware re-spins, and accelerating our ability to respond rapidly to market demands for product innovation and enhancement. We work with a large supply chain, but compliance responsibility for all product content ultimately rests with us. Agile Product Compliance Management is an easy-to-manage solution that provides us with the necessary safeguards to ensure complete regulatory compliance."

As a fully integrated module of Agile Advantage 2006, Agile Product Compliance Management links all product content (design, manufacturing, and compliance) into a single system that provides visibility, enhances productivity, and facilitates audits. One of the most powerful advantages of Agile Product Compliance Management is its change-based logic. When an Agile Advantage user changes a Bill of Materials (BOM) or Approved Manufacturers List (AML), those changes are noted and checked against relevant regulations in the database. Such capability provides assurances that regulatory compliance management will not slow the pace of innovation, a vital competitive advantage for SMEs.

"With increasingly stringent environmental regulations and limited IT resources, small and medium enterprise customers face many great challenges managing regulatory compliance," said Craig Livingston, vice president of worldwide SME operations at Agile Software. "Recognizing these constraints and the serious business problems created by manual compliance methods -- lost efficiencies, the potential for human error, long investigations, the potential heavy fines, and even exclusion from lucrative markets -- Agile Product Compliance Management, with its ease of implementation and management, is designed specifically to help SME's meet today's regulatory management requirements."

About SOMA Networks

Integrating the latest advances in wireless broadband, distributed computing, and Internet technologies, SOMA Networks offers the industry's leading "last-mile" wireless broadband system. With SOMA's SoftAirT wireless system, service providers can roll out a feature-rich package of broadband Internet access and primary-line voice service to the residential and small-office market. Key advantages include its large cell size for quick and inexpensive market entry, multi-megabit data rates, superior voice capabilities, non-line-of-sight access enabling self- installation of the SOMAportT wireless broadband gateway, and subscriber self-activation of services. SOMA Networks is a principal member of the WiMAX ForumT and a supporter of next-generation standards. For more information, visit: http://www.somanetworks.com .

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