Integration platform

End-to-end processes along the digital thread

Today dozens of systems form the backbone of a company's digital infrastructure, including enterprise systems such as ERP or PLM, CAx applications and Office tools. This leads to fragmentation, data silos and a trend towards monolithic systems. IT analysts like Gartner therefore see integration as a key factor for economic success. CONTACT Elements is the integration platform you need to make your processes more consistent, reliable and faster across different systems.

Advantages for enterprises and employees

Distribute and use data across system boundaries
Synchronize processes across multiple systems
Easily integrate assets and devices for IoT solutions
Understand complex issues and their relationships faster

Share data between systems and reduce costs

Inaccessible data silos result in high costs due to manual data collection and editing. CONTACT Elements ensures that data is distributed reliably and automatically. You can use the data in your digital processes regardless of its origin and enjoy decisive advantages , for example in purchasing owing to a company-wide parts inventory, or when gathering information thanks to significantly shorter search times.

Share data between systems and reduce costs

Inaccessible data silos result in high costs due to manual data collection and editing. CONTACT Elements ensures that data is distributed reliably and automatically. You can use the data in your digital processes regardless of its origin and enjoy decisive advantages , for example in purchasing owing to a company-wide parts inventory, or when gathering information thanks to significantly shorter search times.

Speed up workflows using synchronized processes

The integration platform CONTACT Elements speeds up and synchronizes your business processes. For example, engineering change processes: Digital workflows register the provision of results, reduce idle times and map process chains even across systems such as PLM and ERP. Automatic data synchronization ensures that the latest information is available to your employees in all the participating systems.

Learn more

Speed up workflows using synchronized processes

The integration platform CONTACT Elements speeds up and synchronizes your business processes. For example, engineering change processes: Digital workflows register the provision of results, reduce idle times and map process chains even across systems such as PLM and ERP. Automatic data synchronization ensures that the latest information is available to your employees in all the participating systems.

Learn more

The integration platform CONTACT Elements speeds up and synchronizes your business processes. For example, engineering change processes: Digital workflows register the provision of results, reduce idle times and map process chains even across systems such as PLM and ERP. Automatic data synchronization ensures that the latest information is available to your employees in all the participating systems.

Create value from operating data in the Internet of Things

The networking of your machines and systems offers a great opportunity. Openness and interoperability based on industry standards makes it easy to integrate data sources and devices. This means that you can generate new business or boost the efficiency of your own production with innovative digital services such as condition monitoring or predictive maintenance.

Create value from operating data in the Internet of Things

The networking of your machines and systems offers a great opportunity. Openness and interoperability based on industry standards makes it easy to integrate data sources and devices. This means that you can generate new business or boost the efficiency of your own production with innovative digital services such as condition monitoring or predictive maintenance.

Display relationships more clearly and understand them faster

Increasingly complex development processes require greater clarity. The aim is to make data and process elements from different sources along the digital thread more readily available, for example in dashboards. CONTACT Elements' InSync Design System displays extensive product and project data, together with their context, in the browser and on mobile devices more clearly and makes them particularly easy to navigate.

Display relationships more clearly and understand them faster

Increasingly complex development processes require greater clarity. The aim is to make data and process elements from different sources along the digital thread more readily available, for example in dashboards. CONTACT Elements' InSync Design System displays extensive product and project data, together with their context, in the browser and on mobile devices more clearly and makes them particularly easy to navigate.

ON DEMAND WEBCAST

Open the silos - Interoperability as a key requirement for enterprise software

Learn how the CONTACT Elements platform promotes interoperability and openness through its open and composable architecture.

Watch Webcast

ON DEMAND WEBCAST

Open the silos - Interoperability as a key requirement for enterprise software

Learn how the CONTACT Elements platform promotes interoperability and openness through its open and composable architecture.

Watch Webcast

ON DEMAND WEBCAST

Open the silos - Interoperability as a key requirement for enterprise software

Learn how the CONTACT Elements platform promotes interoperability and openness through its open and composable architecture.

The CONTACT Elements Technology

Open standards Interfaces Component architecture Low-code platform Scalability

The CONTACT Elements platform is based on open standards:

Internet standards and key open source software such as web services, Python, HTML5, JSON, REST and HTTP
Tool integration: the open industry standard Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC), which for example provides the basis for our PLM/ALM integration
Data formats: standards such as XML and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) for exchanging structured data
Other data standards such as EDIFACT, eCl@ss, STEP and ReqIF

Elements is synonymous with CONTACT's many years of experience with and extensive expertise in interface technologies:

Maintained interfaces to leading enterprise systems, such as SAP S/4 Hana and SAP CA-PLM, based on CONTACT Elements Catalyst technology
Maintained interfaces to leading M-CAD and E-CAD tools and ALM solutions
Integration of Office tools such as MS Office and Outlook

This enables you to implement end-to-end processes along the digital thread: from product planning, development and production to the implementation of IoT services in your company.

Monolithic systems today are less and less able to meet new requirements. Agility in innovative digital processes requires an IT infrastructure that makes change easy.

This is why the core of CONTACT Elements is its component architecture. Like Lego, Elements is modular rather than monolithic and comprises more than 50 technology, core service and special application modules. Open interfaces and a comprehensive dictionary link these modules with one another and with other open source and third-party components. The advantages:

Continuous delivery: New or updated modules can be used without the need for a time-consuming overall system update.
Error prevention and improved overall quality thanks to clear interfaces
Easy integration of other elements from the open source community and legacy systems
Lower total cost of ownership

Specialist departments usually have to contact the central IT department with regard to their requirements. The aim is therefore to reduce dependence on these limited resources and make it possible to implement new requirements much faster. Elements offers even users and key users a wide range of options in keeping with the principle of configuring instead of programming:

declarative control of the data models via a data dictionary
visual definition of workflows and business rules
modification of elements that are frequently changed, such as catalogs, directly in the user interface
wide range of options that enable users to personalize the interface

Examples include dashboards, which are easily assembled using a widget library, or declarative triggers for the condition monitoring of an IoT solution.

Companies are changing, be it through acquisitions, mergers, internationalization, new areas of business or new operator models in the cloud. Future-proof solutions are therefore characterized by a high level of scalability. CONTACT Elements’ characteristics in this context include:

suitable for individual company divisions, for example for CAD team data management through to the enterprise backbone for thousands of users
high level of performance even in global wide area networks, for example thanks to intelligent replication processes for large assemblies
ready for typical operator models such as on-premise, hosting and cloud/SaaS.
appropriate services through to worldwide 24/7 support.

Success stories from our customers

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Connect heterogeneous PLM systems

Created as the result of a merger between two market leaders, Diebold Nixdorf, a provider of connected-commerce applications for the financial and retail sectors, connects its heterogeneous IT systems on the basis of CONTACT Elements. As middleware with intelligent workflows, Elements automates the exchange of data between the different PLM systems of the merged companies and thus ensures consistent development data within the framework of collaboration between its locations worldwide.

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Speed up the preparation of bids with end-to-end processes

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Weidmüller sets standards for networking and automation in industrial environments worldwide. The high-tech specialist makes extensive use of both the large number of modules and the options for easy system ad-aptation and application development that CONTACT Elements provides. Weidmüller has implemented an end-to-end PLM process from the initial idea to the discontinuation of products. One special feature is the fully automatic generation of bids thanks to end-to-end digital processes.

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Merge complex project data and present it in a clear and concise manner

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MANN+HUMMEL is a global leader in the field of filtration. The company has extensively digitalized its project methodology with CONTACT Elements. The aim was to provide employees with access to the latest project information at the click of a button – globally and tailored to all devices right through to smartphones. The solution involved merging the complex project data in such a way that it can be accessed in its entirety and in a clear and concise manner – from the project itself through to the work items such as documents and ele-ments of the product structure.

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