Juggling Innovation and Compliance

Agility 2006 takes on tough issues for small and medium enterprises

WEEE and RoHS are the newest four-letter words in manufacturing. The time you save by avoiding the long-winded versions of these environmental directives -- waste electrical and electronic equipment and restriction of the use of hazardous substances -- will hardly make up for the time you spend trying to hunt down reports from parts suppliers and offshore manufacturing partners to comply with them.

According to Craig Livingston, Agile's vice-president of Worldwide Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Operations, that was one of the hot topics at Agile's user conference, Agility 2006, in Las Vegas last week. And the lack of consensus in implementation and enforcement of these directives isn't helping either. "These directives are still changing and [new ones] are being added to them," says Livingston. "I just heard of three or four new ones I haven't heard of before. And companies also have their own compliance standards they want their suppliers to follow."  Read more >>p>

UGS Implements Global Channel Partner Program
Effort designed to support midmarket resellers of company's PLM products. 
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MCAD: FiberSIM 5.1
Upgrade from VISTAGY automates early phases of product development for complex composite parts.  Read more >>