GM Gears up With Collaboration Based on Web Services

摘要

General Motors is bringing new vehicles to market faster with help from E-vis, a real-time visualization and collaboration tool based on Microsoft's Net implementation of Web services. Kirk Gutmann, GM's global product development information officer, laughingly admits that he took "a flyer" when he made an early commitment to .Net and Web services. But it's a gamble that seems to be generating impressive gains. As a result of its new emphasis on realtime collaboration (of which E-vis from Electronic Data Systems [EDS] is a linchpin), GM's new-vehicle engineering times have dipped as low as 18 months from the previous average of 40. Assembly-line defects have dropped 25%, GM says, and inventory costs have dropped 20%.