With over 6,000 companies and approx. 900,000 employees, mechanical and plant engineering is the largest industrial sector in Germany. The sector, which is strongly characterised by medium-sized companies, is of great importance not least because of its above-average export rate of over 70%. The strength of the mechanical and plant engineering sector traditionally lies in its technological leadership as well as in the innovative power and flexibility of the companies.
The requirements of the industry lie, among other things, in working with growing bills of materials, in the cross-departmental exchange of information on product changes, and in the management of sub-orders, taking into account 'long-running parts'. In addition, the integration of service and product data management is becoming increasingly important, and budget monitoring in the sense of 'concurrent costing' places high demands on software systems.