Zebisch first talked about the distribution of the size of enterprises in the European Union. These figures demonstrate that the future belongs to small companies. He listed the challenges that enterprises have to meet, growing research and development costs, shorter product life-cycles, increasing product complexity, quality requirements, expanding product portfolios, new international competitors, growing concentration processes and globalisation of markets. The optimisation is influenced by system performance and process improvement. The complex design process requires a broad data base.
Special interest is given to the acquisition, storage, transfer and processing of the data.
He streesed that it is important to have an information culture within an enterprise. They don't have an individual desk except secretaries. When he goes into the office, he takes a folding desk and connects his IT equipment. This approach has been tried by Digital in Germany, Frankfurt. As well as reduction of costs, higher productivity is another advantage.