Products that were once chiefly mechanical have now evolved into complex systems. Cars, for example, have complex electronic components and will probably soon communicate with external devices and stations. Likewise, parking meters can now be linked to computer systems that monitor city-wide parking activity, increasing efficiency and return on investment.

Advitium helps companies that design complex products by streamlining design change, including:

• Product management: managing assemblies and sub assemblies, and incorporating links and exchange portals with suppliers 
• Project and new product development management  
• Link with CAD and electronic design 
• Management of non conformance and maintenance: complete management of the impact on the product changes
  

The core capability of LASCOM's Advitium solution is management of both the complex data that describe a product/project and all the associated processes, which are complex in their own right. New ISO standards clearly show there is constant interaction between these processes and the associated technical or financial data. For example:

• Product planning must fundamentally address customer specifications. The information at this level can be of various types. For instance, they can be financial or technical in nature, such as the maximum speed rating for a tire, or the mean time before failure of a critical part. Contractual information can also be part of product specification. (Therefore suppliers also must be associated to the quality process). 
• All modification must be tracked and authorized. A modification can result in (or from) a non-conformity, but may also be due to a component modification as a result of changing supplier conditions. Naturally, authorization and tracking requirements may differ in each of these cases.
• The impact of modifications must be clearly identified and evaluated and all changes, whatever their nature, have to be tracked and justified. 
•  Finally, the legal and regulatory environment has an important influence on the product development process.

This new process-centric approach also points to a new way of conducting customer relations, as the customer is at the heart of the design chain. The new evolution of ISO standards is process-centric, but also very customer-oriented.