The two industry organizations have composed a standard set of requirements, issued a request for information (RFI) on real-time conferencing solutions, and formed a Global Virtual Conferencing Work Group that will analyze vendor capabilities for conferencing communications and information sharing. The RFI document is available from AIAG collaborative engineering and product development product manager Akram Yunas (ayunas@aiag.org). AIAG is expected to publish the results of the work group’s efforts in the second quarter of this year.

Yunas says the goal is a system that can operate on any desktop in the global automotive industry allowing for the sharing of large information files, including engineering drawings, between OEMs and suppliers. Today, he notes, automotive companies have different systems, with firewalls, security and other barriers to interoperability. He adds that present systems “are not sophisticated enough” to share large data files.

"This is a major effort undertaken by the global automotive industry to specify the requirements and functionality of a unified platform that will enable seamless virtual conferencing throughout the supply chain," Yunas said. “Millions, if not billions, of dollars can be saved throughout the industry if such a unified virtual conferencing system was to exist."