One of the highlights of this month's Computers in Manufacturing exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham (November 7-9, 2000), was the CIM2000 awards presentation.

Now in its sixth year, the awards are designed to acknowledge exhibitors in four key areas of business excellence. Prizes were on offer in the following areas: best advert, best stand, best integrated marketing campaign, and best product (split further into four sectors of manufacturing IT expertise: manufacturing/business management, product engineering/development, plant and factory controls, and e-business systems).

Starting with the best product awards, the exhibitors were judged by a panel of analysts and consultants. Sitting on this year's panel were: Ralph Seeley, senior consultant with Cambashi; Nigel Montgomery of AMR Research; and Simon Bragg, senior analyst with ARC Advisory Group, chaired by Brian Tinham, Editor of MCS.

Products were judged on their ability to demonstrate real business benefit and competitive advantage for manufacturing end users, with further points scored for innovation and novelty.

In the manufacturing management section, top honours went to IFS, for its Applications 2001 enterprise and e-business software. IFS claims that the product has over 500 improvements from last year's suite. The product includes a set of specific Internet business components for sales, marketing, procurement and dynamic collaboration - promising to strengthen manutacturers' relationships with their key suppliers and customers. The product also supports technologies for combinations of online and offline wireless access.

Also highly commended in this section was Pro- fax's Asprova product, a high-speed, low cost advanced planning and scheduling tool which won top manufacturing software prize in Japan last year.

In the product development section, the panel gave top prize to Solidworks, for its Solidworks 2000 3D solid modelling tool. Solidworks 2000 is the eighth release of the company's software, with over 150 enhancements in the areas of file management, surfacing, modelling, drawing productivity, large assembly development and ease-of-use. The product is also aimed at those designers moving from a 2D environment to a 3D one, with fully integrated part modelling, assembly modelling and drafting capabilities.

Runner-up in this category was CADfix 4.0, a solid modelling solution from FEGS. This tool specialises in transferring geometry from a CAD system to downstream applications such as finite element analysis (FEA) or computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

In the plant controls category, first prize went to eMation for its 'Web@aglance' product. This standard web browser solution enables connection to many different control systems, like ABB, Elsag Bailey, GE, Intellution, Siemens and Wonderware. Highly commended in this section was SSI's Tropos DACS software.

In the fiercely contested e-business section, top honours went to SAP for its huge and well-publicised mySAP.com platform and environment. This inte- grated e-business solution offers a collaborative environment with business suppliers and partners, for all sizes and types of manufacturer. SAP says the solution breaks down into several key areas, including dynamic procurement, buying and selling.

mySAP.com Dynamic Procurement automates the procurement and distribution of materials used in the production of finished goods. The Buying solution automates all the processes associated with the procurement of goods and services for maintenance, repair and operations (MRO). Finally, its Selling solution enables manufacturers to expand their market reach through online direct and indirect sales channels. It offers an Internet pricing and configurator tool, plus product catalogues, analysers, order tracking and one-to-one marketing features.

A very close second in the e-business category was E-net Software, with its esparto eProcurement solution. The product supports contract buying, collaborative planning and integration with supply chain management systems.

Moving on to the other awards categories, top prize for best advertisement was judged by Londonbased international agency J Walter Thompson. Steve Lipscombe, publisher of MCS, presented the first prize to Symix, but highly commended both IFS and Xerox for their efforts.

Next came the best integrated marketing campaign award, which saw Geac grab top honours. The entries were judged by a panel of representatives from Penton Media and Findlay Publications. Highly commended in this section were Logica and IFS.

And finally, the award for the best stand was given to Autodesk, with runners-up Lotus and Sun Microsystems. The stands were judged on an exit poll basis, with visitors to the Show deciding the final result. Autodesk's stand demonstrated the complete range of mechanical solutions, including Inventor 4 and Mechanical Desktop Release 5. Compaq also had a presence on the stand, with a demonstration of its latest DeskPro workstation. Visitors to the stand also had the chance to enter a competition to win one of Compaq's iPAQ pocket PCs.