Configuration Solution Enables Industrial Thermal Systems Manufacturer to Offer Global Web-based Quoting and Ordering for Its Custom Products

April 20, 2005 - Columbus, Ohio. TDCI Inc. (TDCI), a diversified enterprise software and consulting company serving both mid-size and large manufacturing organizations, today announced that Watlow Electric Manufacturing Company (Watlow), the world's largest custom designer and manufacturer of industrial heaters, sensors, and controllers, has gone live with web-based product configuration capabilities using the BuyDesignT Control Center configuration engine - the core component of TDCI's BuyDesign Product Customization Management System. Watlow customer service representatives, product specialists, world-wide sales force, and distributors now have access to the capability through the company's web-based eCommerce system.

"The BuyDesign configurator is a key building block in our plan to reduce quote-to-manufacturing time by 40-50%," states Flip Schwarz, Watlow Project Manager. "When we studied the value stream for that process, we saw that each group involved had its own configuration tools and it was impossible to keep all of the product and pricing data in sync. BuyDesign gives us a tool with the flexibility to meet everyone's needs while working off a common set of product information."

The decision to implement BuyDesign, to replace a previous configurator that was proving difficult to utilize with Watlow's other systems, was made after a successful 'proof of concept' pilot. The pilot showed that BuyDesign would handle the breadth of Watlow's products, and that it could be seamlessly integrated with Watlow's Oracle-based eCommerce application running on a UNIX server, and with its ERP system running on an IBM iSeries platform. Watlow integrated BuyDesign Control Center using the BuyDesign Integrator application.

"BuyDesign provides us with by far the best option for integrating product configuration into our various systems," adds Schwarz. "The ability to maintain and use a single set of product rules makes it possible for us to move our configured products to our web-based order entry and inquiry environment much faster and much more confidently than we could with our previous solution. Most importantly, BuyDesign gives us all the tools and controls we need to make product selection and configuration clear, easy, and accurate for all of our target user types."

A key BuyDesign feature being utilized by Watlow is user-based views. This capability enables Watlow to personalize configuration capabilities for different users or types of users. For example, in-house product specialists may have access to a broader range of options for a given feature-set than are generally available to outside sales people or distributors.

Watlow sells products that range from off-the-shelf to engineered-to-order. Now that BuyDesign has been deployed to support the web site's 'build a product' capability for configure-to-order products, Watlow is using BuyDesign to develop additional capabilities to support guided selection and advanced product configuration by entering higher level attributes and applications. Watlow also plans to utilize the BuyDesign Control Center engineering automation engine with the company's 3D-CAD engineering system to provide dynamically generated CAD models and drawings for customized products.

Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, Watlow is the world leader in engineering and manufacturing industrial electric heaters, temperature sensors and temperature controllers - all of the elements in a complete thermal system. Watlow products are used in numerous applications, including semiconductor, plastics processing, foodservice equipment, life sciences, power generation and others. Manufacturing sites are located in several U.S. cities as well as in Mexico, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Watlow has sales offices throughout the world.

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