CALS - what are the potentials for SME’s ?

The DanishCALS Center initiative, aims at making CALS operational in Danish industry. The centerconsists of three Danish companies, Bang & Olufsen, Odense Steel Shipyard, Nilfiskbesides from the Technical University of Denmark and the Danish Technological Institute.The objective is to demonstrate the potentials for improvingbusiness processes by effective information management. The threecompanies involved will demonstrate practical and innovativeapplications of CALS solutions, that will serve as examples for awide variety of SMEs. The paper will focus on the industrial results and the CALSengineering activities. It will summarize some actual results, e.g.a discussion of CALS modeling and analysis techniques. One suchtechnique is "CALS mapping", providing the possibilityto plot an actual company’s CALS status in relation to an"ideal" CALS company. Thus, pointing at the centralareas where CALS can be implemented and with what potentials.