Toyota EPC buyout by EDS

[J.C. BOHL]

All Toyota dealers were notified Last year that TDN was dropping support for the EPC's.
Just received word that EDS took over the system we currently have. We have to switch to Bell& Howell, or buy new hardware for EDS>
I understand that GM uses EDS for their EPC's and want to know what kind of experiences other dealers of any franchise has had with EDS

[Richard]

We have had Parts Imager for several years now, in fact we piloted Parts Imager II for EDS. My best recomendation is to buy Software only, and buy your own PC's to run it, if your in house vendor will allow you to interface with their system using Wall Data's Rumba product. The reason behind this is simple, money. You can build a better PC locally for a whole lot less than you can buy a Ready to go PC from EDS. I will also state that if you don't have someone on staff that is very computer literate, you will not be happy with PI 2. We built our own network and are very pleased with the PI 2 as it stands today.Also, I recomend at least 17" monitors for your shop counter, and a 19-20" for the front counter as the PI 2 requires 1024x768 resolution, these monitors make it a whole lot less streesful on your counter people, and your customers.

[Chuck Hartle]

When it comes to EPC's no one does it like Bell + Howell. The rest are just a bunch of pretenders. Richard is right. If you decide to go with Bell + Howell you could just buy the Server and the Software for it and run B+H EPC right off of PC's instead of X-Terminals to give you full functionality and immulation between your DMS, DCS, and EPC environments.

[Phil PI2]

If you are looking for a truley robust parts catalog the EDS Parts Imager2 product is the one to look at. Parts Imager2 allows you to have the versatility of buying software only if you like and loading it on you own PC or purchasing a complete network solution from EDS as well. The Parts Imager2 product has many many features and functionality that yes not even the competition has. This EPC has features such as bookmarks, VIN Decode, Vin RPO Hilighting, Hotspots, Keyin,to name a few and also is a true 32 bit Windows application not a Windows look alike. If you are in the market for a parts catalog you owe it to yourself to take a good hard look at all parts catalogs and see which one will work best in your enviroment. Try and take a look at the whole picture and not just the EPC part of it. You need to analyize the functionality of the PC and your entire solution. A True Windows based system has not just the ability to give you an excellent parts catalog but also Internet Connectivity, Parts Locating, MS Word, Excel, local infranet connection as well as e-mail, the list goes on. All this functionality is available now with the EDS solution Parts Imager2. I would be happy to give you a list of references if you like since I am a Technical supervisor with the EDS Parts Imager Account.

Best Regards,


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Philip Raubinger
EDS Parts Imager
810-236-8417

[proulx]

Hello everyone

We are a new user of EDS PI2 and i'm
very impressed, if you know some software
runnings under win95/98 it's easy to learn
whit the user manual but if no you must
considere a training from EDS.