Inforbix Poised to Shake Up Engineering Design Search
November 3, 2010
In an exclusive interview with ArnoldIT.com, Oleg Shilovitsky, co-founder and CEO of Inforbix, provides an in-depth look at his information retrieval system for engineering and product design. His firm Inforbix has been operating in a low profile and is now beginning to attract the attention of engineering professionals struggling with conventional data management tools for parts, components, assemblies, and other engineered pieces.
Most search systems are blind to the data locked in engineering design tools and systems. For example, in a typical manufacturing company, a traditional search system would index the content on an Exchange server, email, proposals in Word files, and maybe some of the content residing in specialized systems used for accounts payable or inventory. When these items are indexed, most are displayed in a hit list like a Google results page or in a point-and-click interface with hot links to documents that may or may not be related to the user’s immediate business information need.
But what about the specific part needed for a motor assembly? How does one locate the drawing? Where are the data about the item’s mean time before failure? The semantic relationships between bits of product data data located in multiple silos are missing. The context of information related to components in a manufacturing and production process is either ignored, not indexable, or presented as a meaningless item number and a numerical value.
That’s the problem Mr. Shilovitsky and his team of engineers has solved. With basic key word retrieval now a commodity, specialized problems exist. As Mr. Shilovitsky told me, “I think maybe we have solved a problem for the first time. We make manufacturing and production related data available in context.”
In the interview conducted on November 1, 2010, Mr. Shilovitsky said:
In my view, the most valuable characteristics of future systems will be “flexibility” and “granularity”. The diversity of data in manufacturing organization is huge. You need to be flexible to be able to crack the information retrieval. On the other side, businesses are driven by values and ROI. So, to be able to have a granular solution (don’t boil the ocean) in order to address a particular business problem is a second important thing.
He added:
Our system foundation combines flexibility and granularity with a deep understanding of product data in engineering and manufacturing. One of the problems of product development is a uniqueness of organizational processes. Every organization runs their engineering and development shop differently. They are using the same tools (CAD, CAM, CAE, data management tools, or an ERP system), but the combination is unique.
To read the full text of this exclusive interview, navigate to this link. For more information about this ground-breaking approach to a tough information problem, point your browser to www.inforbix.com.
Stephen E Arnold, November 3, 2010
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