Standard integration product helps manufacturers improve configured product responsiveness and optimize management of product diversity

January 16, Stockholm, Sweden, 2006 - Tacton, a global vendor of sales configuration software and services, is proud to announce availability of a standard integration of their sales configurator, Tacton Configurator, with SMARTEAM, a Dassault Systèmes brand that provides collaborative product lifecycle management solutions to manufacturers worldwide.

The combination of Tacton Configurator and SMARTEAM PLM enables manufacturers of configured products, such as Build-to-Order and Engineer-to-Order, to consistently manage product diversity, from bidding and sales to manufacturing planning. This will dramatically increase their agility and responsiveness to market specificity, while reducing cost and lead-times in the overall process.

Tacton Configurator streamlines the process of selling complex and customized products online or offline, empowering a company’s sales force and partners to sell advanced customer-responsive products, integrated with the back-office business systems and engineering applications.
In contrast to existing PDM or ERP configurators, Tacton offers a highly interactive thin-client web interface for end-users. The interactive dialog not only prevents users from making an incorrect configuration, it also empowers them to quickly create the most optimal configuration for a customer’s needs, even for the most complex products, including sizing calculations, costing, and other factors.

Build-to-Order and Engineering-to-Order products sold with Tacton Configurator can be stored from the thin-client web interface as new BOMs in SMARTEAM, for archiving or further engineering using the many SMARTEAM CAD integrations available. For example, using SMARTEAM PLM‘s native CATIA V5 integration, a designer can work with the saved unique BOM to automatically generate the 3D configured product in the CATIA V5 environment, where it can be further customized to fit a customer’s specific requirements. The designer than stores the new revision of this customized configured product back in SMARTEAM, for transfer to the ERP.

The new integration enables manufacturers to cover the complete Engineer-to-Order process from the point of sale. The full process may be automated through applying SMARTEAM workflow capabilities.

"We are proud to be a Dassault Systèmes CAAV5 Adopter, integrating with SMARTEAM. The launch of the Tacton Configurator integration with SMARTEAM marks an important milestone in our corporate strategy of helping bridge the gap between engineering and sales for complex products." said Christer Wallberg, CEO, Tacton.
One manufacturer already using the joint Tacton-SMARTEAM integration is Ålö, the world’s leading vendor of front-loaders and implements for farm tractors. “Tacton is a key support tool in helping our sales channels launch our new product line. Its integration within SMARTEAM gives our engineers a uniform environment for maintaining CAD models as well as product data,” said Olle Pehrsson, CEO, Ålö AB.