CONTACT Software extends its open Elements platform with a powerful cross application for master data management. Universal Classification combines areas such as sales, development, production and service through comprehensive characteristic and classification schemes that are also very easy to use.
Classify, group, describe, search
The new, universal component of the CONTACT Elements Platform offers companies tailor-made options for grouping any product and project data into freely definable classes and describing them with specific properties. Powerful mechanisms such as the inheritance of characteristics along class hierarchies and multiple classification are used for this.
A particular strength of Universal Classification are the various search options. In addition to the usual basic characteristics, users can now also search for complex characteristic types such as block, multi-language or reference characteristics that represent the object dependencies between the data objects.
Feature-driven product development
As a core service of the Elements Platform, Universal Classification can be used in all specialist applications and for all specialist objects, from projects, requirements and documents to systems and fleets in service. The open CONTACT Elements ecosystem also provides a high-performance REST and Python API for read and write access to object classification data. Preconfigured, Universal Classification is used, for example, in parts management for applications according to DIN 4000 or eClass.
Such system-wide feature catalogs help companies to significantly reduce their costs. They accelerate the precise classification and simplify access to existing solutions. "The increasing number of variants and structural complexity of systems and products demands ever better data organization," emphasizes Patrick Müller, Product Manager PLM at CONTACT Software. "Universal Classification is our answer - the most powerful classification system on the market."
Department-specific views
Multiple classification enables the different enterprise departments to define the same objects independently of one another. Universal Classification provides a flexible lifecycle and rights system to design roles and rights as well as the entry, processing and release points for each view individually and as needed. A requirement that is essential, for example, to release data for online sales and marketing catalogs quickly and securely.
Ready for big data
CONTACT Software has optimized its new classification system for large data volumes down to the GIGA range and prepared it for big data applications such as the Internet of Things.
Further information about this new core service of CONTACT Elements can be found here.
