Sopheon, the international software and services company, and Siemens Business Services’ Standardization Competence Center announced today the introduction of Siemens Compliance Direct Service at Airbus, the world’s largest manufacturer of aircraft. The Siemens service is powered by Sopheon’s Compliance Monitor, a software component of the Sopheon Accolade product life cycle management (PLM) suite that enables product development teams to stay current and achieve proactive compliance with internal and external standards and regulations. The solution also allows users to execute continuous conformity assessment. The Compliance Direct Service is being made available on a pilot basis to engineering teams in France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom responsible for Airbus’ pioneering development of radio-frequency based identification (RFID) technology for tracking aircraft parts.

Compliance with changing internal and external technical standards, industry regulations and laws is a critical aspect of product life cycle management for aviation companies. This challenge is heightened at Airbus whose engineering groups, partners and suppliers operate in a decentralized global environment subject to numerous national and international requirements. The Siemens Compliance Direct Service replaces a difficult-to-manage, time-intensive manual process of locating, updating and distributing information, enabling engineers to improve the efficiency and accuracy of their analysis of complex specifications and proposals. Initial users in the Engineering System Development, Engineering Cabin, Engineering Structure, Engineering Engine, Engineering Operations and Product Integrity teams handling the RFID project will use Compliance Direct to evaluate proposals from various suppliers based on relevant specifications and standards in aviation, semiconductors, wireless data transmission and other areas.

"Ensuring the comfort and safety of the millions of people who fly all over the world in our aircraft has always been our highest priority," said Jens Heitmann, senior manager, systems standardization, process and methods at Airbus. "Compliance Direct is a sophisticated knowledge management solution that masks the complexity of staying up-to-date with the multitude of current and evolving standards and regulations we use in developing innovative products with the highest quality and reliability. The tool also enables us to perform deep levels of conformity analysis and research in very short periods of time. Coming from a long-standing and trusted partner such as Siemens, we are confident the Service will help our engineers manage compliance in a simple, efficient and transparent way and reduce the development costs of new aircraft systems through shorter process times and more effective analysis and use of information."

Siemens Compliance Direct Service is built around Sopheon's Compliance Monitor software that features an advanced linguistic search engine, or "reading robot," that monitors professional journals, news publications, Web sites, internal libraries and other sources arranged by Siemens Business Services' Standardization Competence Center. The Sopheon solution uses technology to automatically handle tens of thousands of documents and related messages. It filters and analyzes the conceptual content from a user's documents, generates an interest profile, and alerts the user when it discovers information or developments related to pertinent standards and regulations.

"Airbus has a well-deserved reputation for the innovative use of technology in direct support of its commitment to safety and quality," said Norbert Zimmermann, manager of Siemens Business Services' Standardization Competence Center. "The company is continuing that tradition by adopting the Compliance Direct Service to address the significant and unique challenges of compliance in aviation manufacturing. Siemens and Sopheon are working closely together on Compliance Direct to help Airbus realize its quality and cost goals by empowering knowledge workers with a system that improves efficiency and effectiveness."

"Airbus’ selection of Sopheon and Siemens to help it address its compliance needs is notable for a couple of reasons," said Andy Michuda, chief executive officer of Sopheon. "First, this transaction is important recognition by one of the most advanced and successful transportation companies in the world that Sopheon’s innovative use of knowledge management capabilities to manage complex and critical aspects of product life cycle management offers unique value. It also demonstrates the success of our continuing efforts to work through strategic partners such as Siemens Business Services’ Standardization Competence Center to extend Sopheon’s ability to capture PLM opportunities outside our targeted client base of process manufacturers in new markets such as discrete manufacturing. We’re delighted to be associated with these two world-class organizations."

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