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CIMsteel Integration Standards
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Supplier's and Manufacturer's Questions
Why should we take notice of CIMsteel?
Information Technology plays an increasingly important role in the production, marketing and distribution of building products. The CIMsteel Project - a major IT R&D project - is now in the Manufacturing & Construction phase, which means that we have reached the stage where we need closer collaboration with the manufacturers and suppliers of steelwork building products. Recent project meetings have indicated that such collaboration would improve the efficiency of the industry as a whole, as well as benefiting the companies themselves.
What do the CIS offer suppliers and manufacturers?
The great majority of the products used in a steel frame comply with some form of "standard". Product manufacturers and software vendors frequently hold libraries of such Manufacturer's Items. The CIS takes advantage of this fact to transfer unambiguous references to such product items, between CIS-compliant software.
What type of products are Manufacturer's Items?
Manufacturer's Items are proprietary product items (such as cold rolled sections) which comply with manufacturer's catalogues. This would also include "semi-standard" product items that comply to specifications agreed between a consortium of manufacturers. Such items use an agreed human readable "manufacturer's identifiers" published by the manufacturer as "manufacturer's lists". Each of these unique and predefined identifiers has seven components and takes the form:
M\entity_type\country\manufacturer\manufacturer's-item\manufacture's-range\version
For example, a Metsec cold-rolled zed purlin of section reference 142.Z.14 is given the manufacturer’s identifier:
M\SECT\UK\METSEC\142Z14\Z-PURLIN\1995
How do we obtain uniqueness?
Your product catalogues should now be compiled so that they are suitable for implementation in computer systems. The first four components of the identifier are assigned to a manufacturer on application to the CIS. The remainder of the identifier is assigned by the manufacturer to uniquely identify that item within that manufacture's total product range.
In the short term, please contact A.S.Watson or A.J.Crowley . In the longer term, this role will be taken on by the CIMsteel Executive Body.
How can we distribute our product information electronically?
Manufacturers are encouraged to place their manufacturer's-lists on the World Wide Web, from where they can be accessed and down-loaded by software vendors and end-users. Access links to these manufacturer managed lists will be provided from this CIS World Wide Web server. In the short term, manufacturer's-lists may be mounted directly on the CIS server.
If you wish to establish a Web Server for your products, on-line help is available from Leeds University by clicking here.
For a list of CIS identifiers for Metsec Building Products Ltd, click here.
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This page is maintained by A.J.Crowley
Last updated 21st February 1997