Tool offers real-time help in decision-making

PartNavigator 2.0 from Precience provides supply-chain decision support for design-capture environments and provides an EDA cross-platform integration technology. The tool improves designers' ability to research new components and make selections in real time. Precience has integrated a proven, reliable algorithm that it developed and tested to predict part obsolescence into its product.

The tool gives design engineers access to supply-chain-management constraints during design entry, increasing design reliability and cutting design time by eliminating rework necessary when parts become obsolete late in the design cycle. By leveraging component end of life, product-change notification, and engineering-change notification information, designers can assess design-in risk. The product also enables engineers to navigate through the database by generic die, package, and pins to cross-reference internal and external part numbers, as well as back-annotate schematics with procurable part numbers.

PartNavigator 2.0 is available on Windows 95, 98, and 2000; NT 4.0; and all Unix platforms and integrates with many design-capture tools. The price is $10,000 for an annual floating license/subscription. Multilicense configurations are also available. An unrestricted license for a seven-day trial is available from the Precience Web site.

Precience, 1-301-421-9054, www.precience.com.