IBM and Dassault Systèmes Announce Industry Solution for Electronics Manufacturers

"Integrated Mechanical Product Development" First in Series of Electronics Industry-Specific PLM Solutions -- Speeds Mechanical Product Development While Strengthening Innovation

IBM and Dassault Systèmes have recently announced an IBM Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Industry Solution for the Electronics industry. The Integrated Mechanical Product Development for Electronics (IMPD) solution links the applications and disciplines involved in mechanical product development and enables manufacturers to reuse valuable corporate intellectual property.

The IMPD solution consists of a set of integrated products from CATIA and SMARTEAM combined with a set of DS PLM Practices developed for the electronics industry, including consumer electronics, microelectronics and medical devices. IMPD streamlines mechanical product development operations by increasing the amount of semantic data exchanged between applications and development disciplines such as style, design, and tooling and analysis.

By maintaining the product's design history across all stages of development, the IMPD solution enables electronics companies to shorten time to market and focus on innovation. It allows them to explore more design possibilities in less time, capture and reuse existing features or assemblies made context-sensitive, keep automatic links between part and mold design, create designs in accordance with corporate standards through automatic guidance, and take into account quickly and seamlessly the results of digital simulation and analysis.

"PLM solutions from IBM and Dassault Systèmes have proven instrumental in capturing, managing and sharing corporate know-how to ensure compliance of product and processes with corporate standards and best practices in terms of integration and optimization," said Toshiyuki Nakazaki, director of Research and Development at car-audio electronics manufacturer Clarion.

"In electrical and electronics manufacturing, rapid innovation is the name of the game," said Thomas Friel, worldwide Electronics business leader, IBM Product Lifecycle Management. "To help our customers optimize their product development operations, we have developed a comprehensive solution uniting IBM Business Consulting Services with IBM PLM Solutions and have included best practices developed with leading electronics manufacturers in all domains of electro-mechanical product development. This winning combination integrates the design process with analysis and tool design, provides morphing capability for design re-use and supports the ability to make rapid changes late in the design cycle. The new solution will help our E&E customers deliver more stylish and innovative products to market faster, laying the groundwork for their future success."

"E&E manufacturers face very specific challenges in their industry, namely, rapidly changing customer tastes, short time to market, and a large number of actors involved in product development," said Etienne Droit, executive vice president Sales and Services, Dassault Systèmes. "IMPD is a federating solution that unifies the often fragmented approach to product development in the E&E industry, and in doing so, provides a precious opportunity for business-process reengineering."

Leading Window Maker Uses CATIA and SMARTEAM to Cut Design Time

IBM and Dassault Systèmes have announced that Loewen Inc., a Manitoba-based leading manufacturer of luxury Douglas fir windows and doors, will implement their Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions. PLM will enable Loewen to reduce design cycle times, increase productivity, and improve departmental linkages by providing a consistent information repository for product knowledge and design constraints.

Loewen chose IBM PLM Solutions, with CATIA V5, the world's leading collaborative virtual product design application and SMARTEAM, for product data and lifecycle management, both developed by Dassault Systèmes, to upgrade their existing 2D system. As a manufacturer of highly configurable products, Loewen must develop systems and processes that give customers the greatest opportunity for customization yet ensure product manufacturability. The PLM solutions will not only provide this flexibility, but will also enable Loewen to meet an aggressive development schedule and permit employees, suppliers and customers collaborate on custom designs.

"As a midsize manufacturer with approximately 1200 employees, we were pleased to receive the type of attention and support from IBM and RAND Worldwide, an IBM and Dassault Systèmes business partner, that is typically offered to a large scale multi-national corporation," said Stephen Segal, Chief Information Officer, Loewen. "For Loewen, PLM is a strategic initiative that will result in incremental top line revenue growth while streamlining and improving ongoing operational practices. The strength of the business partners combined with the scalability and robustness of the CATIA and SMARTEAM solutions were all key attributes in our selection decision."

Loewen's engineering team will use CATIA's knowledgeware functionality to increase design reuse and to ensure adherence to company standards. CATIA's finite element analysis tools will also be used to virtually simulate how weather conditions, such as the high winds of a hurricane, impact glass panes, thus saving prototype costs.

SMARTEAM will be used to manage Loewen's product development process, which includes millions of variations of custom-built doors and windows. Loewen will also use SMARTEAM to submit bid requests to suppliers and contractors, which will enable them to bid on more projects and increase their win ratio. In the next stage of the PLM implementation, Loewen is considering linking its PLM platform to the company's ERP system.

"Dassault Systèmes works very closely with manufacturers in the fabrication and assembly sector such as Loewen to develop solutions that fulfill their very specialized business requirements," said Joel Lemke, general manager PLM Americas, Dassault Systèmes "Reuse of product design data, end-to-end coverage of development processes, and collaborative workspaces for development teams and suppliers - these are just some of the advantages of PLM that will enable Loewen to marry tradition and quality with highly competitive development processes."

Running on IBM IntelliStations and using IBM xSeries eServers, Loewen designers will now have a system that is responsive, scalable and easy to use. Rand, an IBM and Dassault Systèmes Business Partner, will provide on-site support and training.

"Loewen's choice to implement CATIA V5 and SMARTEAM is one more example that small-to-medium sized businesses recognize that IBM PLM solutions developed by Dassault Systèmes are not only affordable, but also that they are key to maintaining competitive advantage," said Frank Baldesarra, President and CEO of RAND Worldwide. "Loewen has positioned itself to increase productivity dramatically and to enhance its entire business process."