Similarly, the center midwifed the development of a system that allows a smarter approach to plant maintenance. The two traditional approaches to maintenance are to replace items periodically or to fix them when they break. By modeling a facility and then monitoring its activity, the program calculates the best time to repair or replace different components. Intel has adopted some of the basic ideas from this approach and continues to explore its applicability in the company's semiconductor manufacturing plants. It gives everyone common, easy access to anything.
Construction is a business that stands to benefit greatly from electronic commerce.
More than two-thirds of the cost of a new building covers the expense of procured materials and services. Purchasing the right components at a reasonable price and arranging for them to be delivered at the proper time is a critical element in the construction process. One project that connects the 3-D CAD model of a project with online vendor catalogs illustrates the potential of an automated equipment analysis and procurement process. When the engineer adds a pump of a certain type to a building model, the software automatically searches vendor catalogs on the Internet and identifies suitable vendors. The inquiry then triggers the vendor's pump selection software that examines the building model and performs its own analysis to determine the proper pump model.