Collaboration software case question

Honda is the world’s largest motorcycle maker and Japan’s

third largest automaker behind Toyota and Nissan. It also has

a power products division that manufactures lawn mowers,

snow blowers, portable generators, and outboard motors. The

company’s car models include the Accord, Acura, Civic,

Legend, Prelude, and Insight—a gasoline-electric hybrid.

The automobile industry is intensely competitive, with manufacturers

facing cut-throat global competition. They are under

pressure to reduce costs to the minimum and pass the savings

along to customers. They must also reduce the time to produce

new models that appeal to customers in many parts of the

world while tailoring automobiles to customer specifications. To

overcome these challenges, manufacturers are turning over an

increasing portion of their design, development, production,

and customer-support activities to multiple suppliers and other

business partners. Such collaborative product development is

changing the way Honda brings products to market.

The research and development activities for Honda use

software called eMatrix from MatrixOne to support collaborative

product development. This Internet-based system helps

document and manage the product’s bill of materials (BOM)—

a list that describes all components of the finished product,

such as part numbers, quantity, measurements, and labor and

material costs. An accurate and complete BOM is critical to the

manufacturing process—any mistake can cost the manufacturer

in loss of labor and materials and valuable time-to-market.

eMatrix enables Honda research and design engineers to

share design information from the early stages of product

development so that the accuracy of the engineering BOM is

greatly improved. The system supports engineers as they

manage and configure all the details that go into a product:

basic car design, options, features, local variations, components

and larger assembled parts, specifications, supporting

documentation, costs, and engineering changes. The single,

accurate view of the engineering BOM across all organizations

involved in the product ensures that most design and

development issues are identified and resolved earlier in the

design and manufacturing cycle. Such coordination leads to

the early detection and resolution of many problems—saving

time and resources. The bottom line is higher quality,

decreased costs, and the ability to bring automobiles to market

faster.

The eMatrix system is being deployed in multiple stages

with the ultimate goal of linking Honda’s global research and

design activities wherever they are located. The first phase of

the rollout was completed in October 2001 and connected

several thousand design engineers throughout Japan, the

United States, the United Kingdom, and Thailand. The software

vendor, MatrixOne, partnered with Fujitsu to deploy the

eMatrix platform and integrate it with Honda’s other key information

systems.