Microsoft drives automotive industry toward "peak performance"

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Apr. 29, 2005

At Microsoft's Global Automotive Summit in Dearborn, MI today, chairman Bill Gates teamed up with his company's Automotive Business Unit to tout what is being positioned as a major new initiative aimed at the automotive industry. Microsoft's Peak Performance Initiative aims to focus a number of the company's key technologies on four areas: new product development, operational performance, supply chain, and sales and customer service.

According to a statement issued by the company, the Peak Performance Initiative seeks to utilize the "breadth of technologies" available in the Microsoft platform to "improve communication and collaboration across the automotive enterprise."

This new initiative appears much broader in scope than Microsoft's earlier automotive endeavours, which have been focused primarily on telematics platforms. The company's mobile in-car software platform and reference design, previously codenamed "T-box", is expected to be available next year as Windows Mobile for Automotive. Earlier this year, the Automotive Business Unit announced a collaboration with Fiat and several other partners to develop a flexible, low-cost telematics platform that will be integrated into every new Fiat Auto car.

According to Microsoft, the Peak Performance Initiative focuses on four key areas:

New Product Development -- Microsoft Office 2003 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 use Web services to help widely scattered engineering teams share and collaborate on product and design information. Automakers, suppliers and dealers are also implementing Microsoft Office 2003 applications to manage schedules and resources and Project Server 2003 to automate project management capabilities.
Operational Performance -- Transforming raw plant floor information into usable intelligence is the primary goal for any plant floor manager. SQL Server 2000 can capture and store plant floor data and then transport that data to SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to provide greater operational visibility.
Supply Chain -- Microsoft industry partners are helping automotive manufacturers see deeper into their supply chain, using technologies such as RFID to provide real-time information that can impact product delivery schedules. Manufacturers are making use of Microsoft technologies such as SQL Server 2000, to capture data, and SharePoint Portal Server 2003, to distribute data to the appropriate business line managers.
Sales and Customer Support -- Microsoft seeks to promote "seamless communication between manufacturers, dealers and their customers by providing a flexible infrastructure with enhanced security." For instance, dealers using tools such as .NET, Windows Server 2003 and BizTalk Server 2004 can quickly notify a salesperson from a dealership when a promising lead has been assigned.

Microsoft has been working with the automotive industry for more than a decade. Through business applications, .NET technologies, and enterprise platform support, manufacturers are able to "accelerate time to market, collaborate globally with engineers, reduce costs by leveraging the power of the Internet, and increase visibility into their production and supply chain processes," the company says.

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