Pollak Selects Proficiency to Automate Design Interoperability

-- Collaboration Gateway Expected to Generate Substantial Time Savings, Improve OEM/Supplier Collaboration for Tier 1 Automotive Supplier --

MARLBOROUGH, Mass., April 26 -- Proficiency, a global provider of enterprise interoperability software, announced today that Pollak, a Stoneridge, Inc. company, has selected and implemented the Proficiency Collaboration Gateway(TM). Proficiency's solution will automate the interoperability of native models between various design systems for Pollak, eliminating inefficiencies in the design and re-mastering process, enabling the company to better serve current and prospective OEMs customers and participate in collaborative design with its internal divisions. The company anticipates saving hundreds of engineering person-hours annually. On one example program, a 60-hour remodeling effort was reduced to just four hours. Pollak began rolling out the Collaboration Gateway in its Pollak-SPD division, located in Canton, Mass., in March.

"I liken the Collaboration Gateway to a huge Tylenol for a mega headache," said Peter Roy, senior CATIA designer and lead implementer of the Collaboration Gateway at Pollak. "As a supplier, we face fierce competition to be accurate and timely with our design deliverables. Proficiency's solution stood out immediately as the only one that truly addresses the design delivery challenge of suppliers, and we have been impressed with Proficiency's high level of personalized customer service and support."

Pollak designs and manufactures integrated electronic and electromechanical switch products, instrument clusters and gauges and intricate actuation products for the automotive market. Bringing these products to market requires experienced engineers with varying disciplines to collaboratively design between these internal groups and with its OEMs.

Today, Pollak designs its products utilizing many of the industry's leading design systems. However, as a Tier 1 supplier, the company needs to deliver its designs to its manufacturing customers such as DaimlerChrysler and The Ford Motor Company in the design system they prefer. To date, this process for Pollak had involved designing the individual part or complex assembly, then "re-mastering" it manually using IGES or STEP data, concluding with a painstaking search for incompatibilities within each translation. According to Pollak, after conducting a thorough vendor analysis, Proficiency emerged as the most time-efficient and cost-effective option for transforming this process. With the Collaboration Gateway, Pollak will be able to translate legacy models, facilitate design reuse and support its ability to take on new projects, by delivering native data in whatever format is needed, regardless of the design's original system.

"Pollak is committed to engineering excellence, and is dedicated to customer satisfaction in development and delivery of its products and services. As such, we are honored that Pollak selected the Collaboration Gateway as the solution that met its high criteria," said Trenton H. Brown, Proficiency's president and chief executive officer. "By working with Proficiency, Pollak will be able to improve enterprise communication and reduce costs of new product development between its internal groups that use disparate tools, and when iterating on new designs with OEMs."

The Proficiency Collaboration Gateway is a Web-based, feature-level CAD interoperability software application that facilitates the sharing of product design information, including features, history, constraints, assembly structure, dimensions, and metadata, throughout the extended automotive product lifecycle process. The Collaboration Gateway enables companies like Pollak to exchange native parametric CAD models between Dassault Systemes' CATIA(R) v4 and CATIA(R) v5, PTC's Pro/ENGINEER(R) and Pro/ENGINEER(R) Wildfire(TM), and UGS' Unigraphics(R) NX and I-deas(R) NX Series.

About Proficiency

Proficiency brings interoperability to the enterprise. The Company's award-winning Collaboration Gateway allows companies to effectively develop and launch new products by providing critical design intelligence to all constituents in the PLM continuum, including marketing, engineering, manufacturing, and purchasing, in an immediately useable format, regardless of the original system. This strategic product development innovation leads OEMs and suppliers to significantly shorten design cycles, decrease time-to-market, and lower design costs.

Proficiency's customers include global automotive, aerospace/defense and heavy equipment companies such as The Ford Motor Company, Boeing, and European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS). For more information on Proficiency, please visit http://www.proficiency.com/ or call +1.508.486.9868 (North America) or +49 (0) 811-55526-0 (Europe).

   Corporate Contact:
   Ken Klapproth
   Proficiency, Inc.
   +1.508.486.9868, x241
   kenk@proficiency.com
   
   Agency Contact:
   Catherine Allen
   SHIFT Communications
   +1.617.242.7325, x227
   catherine@shiftcomm.com

Proficiency and Collaboration Gateway(TM) are trademarks of Proficiency, Ltd. All other products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.