PROSTEP appointed Certified Data Service Provider for Ford in Europe

PROSTEP is a Certified Data Service Provider (CDSP) for Ford facilities in Germany and England. By certifying PROSTEP, Ford confirms that the company satisfies the high design methodology and IT infrastructure requirements that Ford makes on its service providers with regard to data exchange.

This means that PROSTEP is entitled to process product development data provided by suppliers directly in Ford’s Team center environment and check in/check out data on behalf of these suppliers. Many of Ford’s suppliers have already been using PROSTEP’s OpenDESC.com services for some time now.

There is, however, also an increasing need for data to be placed directly in Ford’s database for transfer and conversion purposes. This allows the data that needs to be converted to be “fetched” and then made available to the recipient once conversion has been performed.

Therefore the newly enhanced functionality provided by OpenDESC.com now allows data to be placed in Ford’s PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) system. This certification also means that PROSTEP can significantly expand the range of services it offers Ford suppliers.

Data can be transferred both from and to the data-base at Ford via a secure access point. It is also possible to prepare data for conversion, migration and drawing derivation according to Ford’s specifications. These services have been fully integrated into the existing OpenDESC.com services.