Legrand Drives Innovation on Multi-Site International Projects with Dassault Systemes' Solutions

26 June 2006

Leading Installations Specialist Chose CATIA V5 to Give It a Competitive Advantage in the Electrical Market

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 20, 2006--Dassault Systemes, a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, today announced that Legrand, a specialist in electrical installations and data networks for residential, commercial and industrial buildings, is implementing its solutions at more than 60 sites, to drive innovation and manage data effectively.

"There is a market frenzy to launch new or updated product ranges more and more frequently, and enormous competition, especially from Asia, so we need new designs and innovative functions to lead the market," says Daniel Fargeaud, General Manager, New Product Marketing and Development, Wiring Devices Division. "To drive this innovation we needed to shorten development times from three years to 18 months, and rationalize the systems of data exchange between the many design offices we had acquired around the world. We have facilitated their collaboration on joint projects through CATIA V5."

"Legrand benchmarked the leading solutions on the market and CATIA V5 was the unanimous winner. Now even die-hard supporters of some of the previous systems at Legrand's subsidiaries can see the advantages of having one company-wide system," notes Pierre Moreau, general manager PLM South Europe, Dassault Systemes. "CATIA V5 enables Legrand to verify its new product designs faster in 3D, and its realistic 3D rendering capabilities mean they can educate the sales force before the product actually exists."

Legrand's managers today describe the company as 'an international group of SMBs' due to over 100 acquisitions of companies around the world, all now grouped in the Legrand portfolio of 20 brands. This dynamic growth, including several recent mergers in Asia, resulted in a clear need for a reliable and fast solution for design and data management for the product catalogue of more than 130,000 items and millions of components. Legrand relies on ENOVIA MatrixOne, a new member of the Dassault Systemes' family since its recent acquisition, for its data management systems.

CATIA V5 answers Legrand's needs for all its core design processes, including mold tooling and sheet metal design. CATIA's openness with third party applications is also an advantage. Legrand works with the CAA V5 product Q-Checker from Transcat, a diagnostic tool used by the IT support team to validate CAD models.

The collaborative engineering approach enabled by CATIA V5-where a product may be designed in one country, developed in another, and manufactured in a third-has enabled Legrand to use its design resources to the maximum. With a great variety of new highly technical projects in view, this collaboration is proving invaluable for sharing knowledge and reducing time-to-market in product development.

Legrand is supported in after-sales service by Dassault Systemes France.

About Legrand

Legrand (www.legrandelectric.com) is the world specialist in products and systems for electrical installations and information networks, offering solutions for use in residential, commercial and industrial buildings. Operating in over 60 countries with sales of EUR 3.2 billion, it employs about 31,000 people and its catalogues list more than 130,000 products. At Legrand, innovation drives growth: with nearly 5% of sales invested in R&D every year, the group brings out a steady stream of new, high added-value products.