13 March 2006

Integrated solution will increase profits and minimize development costs of complex freeform-shape products

Paris, France, March 7, 2006 ─ IBM and Dassault Systèmes (DS) (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSYPA) today announced Styled Plastic and Packaging (SP&P), a new complete, integrated solution enabling Consumer Goods businesses to launch more new products, in less time. Manufacturers can reduce the time spent developing their products, bringing them more quickly to market, and thereby increasing customer satisfaction and potentially capturing new market opportunities for sustainable growth.

'The complex Sevan Stabilized Platform (SSP) 300 project, wherein Yantai Raffles builds the Sevan Marine-designed oil platform, utilizes CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA from Dassault Systèmes and epitomizes the advantages that PLM brings to worldwide industry, according to Brian Chang, CEO, Yantai Raffles Shipyard. The Yantai-built SSP 300s will be deployed by its customer Petrobras.
Manufacturers of styled products face growing pressure to differentiate their products and increase their responsiveness to global market pressures. Development processes are often disjointed, inefficient and complex, resulting in an inability to deliver the right products on time, and potential loss of revenue and market share. By increasing responsiveness with SP&P, companies can boost customer satisfaction and create brand loyalty, while minimizing the high costs of product development, knowledge management and data conversion.
 

“Companies deploying SP&P can offer more distinguished style value than their competitors,” notes Bruno Latchague, EVP Development & Support, Industry Solutions, Dassault Systèmes. “SP&P enables them to quickly integrate innovative technologies into their products, and reuse experience from previous projects, reducing the number of physical prototypes and therefore total development time. The result is a wider range of innovative products to meet the needs of a demanding market.”
The SP&P solution combines CATIA V5 for product design and simulation, SMARTEAM for business process and lifecycle management, and a unique and evolving set of dedicated DS PLM Practices, developed by Dassault Systèmes. Advanced training, based on extensive knowledge of customer experiences, has been developed to facilitate quick, easy and successful solution implementation.
 

Unique advanced design capabilities
The Styled Plastic and Packaging Solution’s capabilities comprise the best-in-class Industrial Design tools of CATIA V5: Imagine & Shape (IMA) and Functional Molded Parts (FMP). Imagine & Shape provides designers with unique and powerful subdivision surface modeling technology to rapidly create and style today’s complex aesthetic surfaces in 3D, without prior manual sketching or prototyping, providing them with complete creative freedom.
Design engineers using the Functional Molded Part product can focus on parts modeling, rather than spending their time solving technical problems, defining the complete functional specification for both parts and tooling and delivering breakthrough reductions in the design-to-manufacturing cycle. The reverse engineering and rendering capabilities of CATIA V5 facilitate 3D product visualization, bringing an early understanding of the impact of design changes, and driving product quality, innovation and communication.

With best-in-class collaborative product lifecycle solutions based on SMARTEAM, businesses benefit from inter-company integration of their design and manufacturing processes, including product data management. SP&P Solution’s tools also allow designers to work concurrently on the same designs, revise them rapidly, and make late modifications, giving manufacturers a new degree of flexibility for efficient multi-site concurrent engineering, and minimizing cycle costs.

“Today’s next must-have consumer goods item needs to get into the hands of the user at the right time, at the right price, with the best mix of functionality and features, and all with an award-winning design,” says Mark Lefebvre, Global Marketing Executive, Product Lifecycle Management solutions, IBM. “The Styled Plastic and Packaging Solution can help our clients meet those tough challenges and focus on the innovation that matters.”

At the core of the Styled Plastic and Packaging Solution is Collaborative Generative Design (CGD), comprising the SMARTEAM and CATIA V5 applications, which provides styled product manufacturers with an attractively priced common platform. Delivered as a PLM Solution for medium-sized businesses, this collaborative base can then be extended with dedicated configurations to address the specific requirements of individual users. They also benefit from a total solution addressing their PLM infrastructure needs, including hardware and middleware to manage security, backup and recovery, high performance and flexibility.