item and crossbase - the ideal modular system

Products from item are legendary in the field of mechanical engineering. There is hardly a mechanical engineering company that does not develop its prototypes or special machines using the Solingen-based company's modular system. With its modular system, item also offers protective and partition wall components as well as workstation systems made of aluminum. The successful idea is ultimately basedon a universally usable profile system that replaced steel construction in mechanical engineering in the 1980s. The company now offers more than 3,000 products in every industrialized country around the globe.

Based on the crossbase standard software, a PIM, MAM and cross-media solution tailored to the individual requirements was implemented for item. With crossbase.text, multilingual text modules are automatically generated based on the product features maintained in the database. The products are also enriched with extensive images, documents and continuous text and mapped in various market and media-specific product views. These include, for example, the over 500-page product catalog for the MB Building Kit System, the online catalog and the ikasys CD-ROM catalog, all of which are created on a country-specific basis.

The layout of the printed product catalog is individual and very sophisticated. Modular, design-heavy layout modules are controlled via flow frames. This means that the number of pages in a document is dynamically adapted to the content.

The item CD-ROM catalog ikasys offers all the functionalities of the online catalog with assembly instructions, CAD data and parts list function with inquiry or order option. The solution offers great benefits in the area of eCommerce thanks to the output of electronic catalogs in BMEcat format and the ECLASS and UNSPSC classifications for trading partners. These include a wide range of automotive manufacturers and suppliers.