Today the full benefits of STEP product sharing can be realized only by large enterprises with the wherewithal to manage STEP's high cost of implementation. The objective of the SESAME project is to provide a tool-set that makes STEP product data sharing available to Small and Medium-sized enterprises. The SESAME project will bridge the technology gap that currently separates the tiers in an industrial supply chain. The SESAME tool-set will demonstrate that a judicious selection of Internet protocols and technologies can be used as a new implementation method for the STEP standard. The SESAME tool-set will use HTML and HTTP for navigation, across enterprises, of product data containers. The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) will be used as the means to publish a queryable product structure on the Internet as well as a means for federating product structures among enterprises. Java will be used to provide a platform-independent, object-oriented representation of product definition information. Java serialization will be used as the Internet standard vehicle for transporting product information between enterprises. VRML2.0 will be used to integrate visualization within SESAME. The goal of the SESAME tool-set is to provide a distributed, standards-based, user-friendly product information management system.
Benefits: SESAME will enable sharing of product information among peers in the supply chain and will be applicable to every variety of industrial virtual enterprise. Suppliers and contractors will benefit from on demand, rapid access to product information. The product information will be delivered with a high degree of confidence because manual transcriptions will be eliminated from the process and because the product information will be the latest available.
