V5 PLM in Aerospace: Enabling Innovative Products for a Better Future
Alain Houard, Dassault Systèmes
Dassault Systèmes’ philosophy is to “enable people to create innovative products and experience the whole lifecycle to build a better environment for the future,” and the market is responding. In the past four years DS has gained 8 points of market share as its competitors have stalled and now serves more than 90,000 customers in 11 industries worldwide.
This success is as important to Dassault Systèmes’ customers as it is to DS itself, for as the company’s revenues grow, so does its investment in research and development. In fact, more than a quarter of the company’s revenues go each year to developing the next great leap forward in Product Lifecycle Management, the largest investment in the industry and a critical success factor in the company’s 25-year tradition of innovation.
Our investment is multiplied by the investments of our 3,500 partners, 150 software partners, more than 5,000 CAA V5 developers and 130 education partners. More than 6,000 institutions now train 1.2 million students on V5 every year, ensuring our customers a ready supply of skilled engineers to develop their products.
DS also grows it capabilities through acquisitions, most recently including MatrixOne and ABAQUS. Together, the DS brands span the entire range of the product lifecycle, from development of the virtual product (CATIA) to virtual testing (SIMULIA), to virtual production (DELMIA). PLM collaboration is supported throughout this cycle by ENOVIA, including ENOVIA VPLM, ENOVIA SMARTEAM and ENOVIA MatrixOne. V5 PLM offers scalability, with the full PLM portfolio available on 64 bit, and open 3D format in 3D XML, which opens the world of product data to every type of user for inclusion in everything from technical documentation and maintenance manuals to marketing brochures and websites.
More than 360 PLM-powered third-party applications are available, thanks in large part to our longstanding commitment to open standards and commitment to enterprise integration through middleware solutions including IBM WebSphere, Lotus, Rational, Tivoli and DB2, as well as Microsoft.net, Windows Server System and Office.
A Proven Track Record of Aerospace Success
Dassault Systèmes’ long-term focus is on defining, controlling and monitoring the physical world with 3D collaborative innovation that allows users to “See What You Mean” and promoting 3D as a democratizing force in industry and society. These efforts were recognized with AMR Research’s 2005 Innovation Award and are inherent in offerings such as Virtools WebPlayer, which allows the widespread reuse of a company’s intellectual property in scenarios ranging from shopping and sales/customer communications to mounting instructions, training and repairs.
Given this track record of achievement and commitment to the success of our customers, it is no wonder that DS V5 PLM is now the de facto standard in the Aerospace & Defense industry, used by such leading lights as Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, Dassault Aviation, Goodrich, Pratt & Whitney Canada and Sikorsky. Our customers consistently cite 40% to 90% improvements in development time, 30% to 80% reductions in engineering changes, and manufacturing costs that are lowered 35% to 60% through the strategic application of our solutions.
For example, Pratt & Whitney Canada is saving $500,000 per engine by eliminating maintenance prototypes, has achieved a 10-fold increase in its NC programming speed, and resolves more than 70% of potential clashes early in its design process. Dassault Aviation, meanwhile, has cut its aircraft assembly costs in half, reduced its tooling costs by 66%, and totally eliminated both assembly problems and physical prototypes. And Boeing reports that its first 777, designed with V5 PLM, assembled better than the 747 did after 20 years of production, thanks in part to a 90% decrease in engineering changes. The company’s new Global Collaborative Environment, with V5 PLM at its heart, is linking 135 sites and 300 suppliers into an extended virtual enterprise on the 787, thanks to the adoption of common processes, methodologies and software.
R17 Enhancements Deepen Collaborative Capabilities
As impressive as these achievements are, Dassault Systèmes is never satisfied and continues to push for even more capabilities with each new release. This has never been truer than with our latest V5R17 release. Major enhancements in R17 include:
· Business Process Optimization. R17 supports the aerospace industry’s business transformation by extending the coverage of broad V5 PLM process-centric applications into the modeling, simulation and electrical domains. Modeling has been expanded with Imagine and Shape, Functional Modeling, Auto Filleting and 3D Master modules. Electrical domain capabilities are enhanced with deeper integration between 3D electrical harness design and documentation for faster production of 3D-based documentation
· Empowerment of Value Chain Innovation. R17 brings together the engineering and sourcing communities with the new ENOVIA V5 Collaborative Enterprise Sourcing product suite. This suite creates a global collaborative “source-in-context” environment for the engineering and sourcing communities, supporting reuse of preferred components and supply rationalization with reduced supply risk and sourcing/engineering cycles while providing hazardous material visibility and obsolescence management. R17 also enhances the synchronization process between ENOVIA VPLM and ENOVIA SMARTEAM sites, facilitating product engineering exchange between partners and suppliers of all sizes and encouraging faster, more frequent design iterations.
· Streamlined Engineering-to-Manufacturing. R17 introduces major extensions to the CATIA NC machining and DELMIA body-in-white domains, shortening the design-to-manufacturing cycle with complete off-line process simulation for better resource optimization, improved production quality, and reduced machine down-time for tuning. R17 also strengthens the ENOVIA Engineering and Manufacturing hubs with DELMIA Generative Work Instructions directly from Engineering Requirements data. This enables flawless collaboration between engineering, production planning, manufacturing engineering, and shop floor execution for increased productivity with flexibility and accuracy. R17 also introduces a new DELMIA solution for Small and Medium Businesses.
· Continuous Growth of Intellectual Capital. ENOVIA VPM Navigator has been improved with advanced versioning and configuration control, synchronizing specific instances to any selected version and supporting concurrent relational design. This allows users to study more design scenarios while continuing to leverage relational design to better understand and anticipate changes. Advanced effectivity and configuration management are now embedded in ENOVIA VPM Navigator, improving designer productivity for more efficient design optimization processes. R17 also optimizes ENOVIA SMARTEAM BOM management and delivers improved item management.
· Maximized Standards Adoption. R17 continues to leverage the proven V5 PLM openness by providing major XML enhancements through its combined 3DXML and web services strategy. Meanwhile, the CAA program continues to demonstrate the strength of the V5 open platform, with more than 400 partners’ applications available.
Aerospace-Specific Solution Offerings Take V5 PLM to Next Level
Other new offerings unveiled recently include:
· Digital Aerospace Supply Chain Collaboration (ASCH) Industry Solution, part of our Business Process Contents (BPC) offering;
· CATIA PLM Express;
· ENOVIA Collaborative Enterprise Sourcing; and
· ENOVIA 3D Live.
A Business Process Contents (or BPC) is a DS-certified, supported and maintained specialization of our core PLM products, designed to capture a specific business process. DS Industry Solutions consist of BPCs that can be reused flexibly in other scenarios or to implement a customer’s own configuration project. These BPCs allow companies to minimize the amount of customization they need to develop and maintain when deploying PLM.
The new ASCH BPC offering provides a specific, industry-related preconfigured SMARTEAM environment to enable and streamline key business processes and capture paper-based forms in an electronic format. It also provides change management controls to illustrate compliance with key industry standards and a structure that relates an aircraft program to its associated product data, allowing the business to quickly find the latest relevant information. ASCH enables aerospace suppliers to manage work packages by providing methods for automating data transfer, recapture and reconciliation with customers and suppliers alike.
CATIA PLM Express, meanwhile, consists of collaborative offerings focused on user roles for workgroup deployment. It features six cross-industry, pre-defined roles (layout engineer, styled product engineer, mechanical product engineer, equipment product engineer, review and optimize engineer and manufacture engineer) with 44 industry-tailored, role-based options. Benefits include one common base configuration; knowledge-based CATIA modelers; a combination of CATIA and ENOVIA SMARTEAM core collaboration services; and a robust platform for growth that is simple, scaleable, attractively priced and easy to administer. Speed of implementation is the greatest benefit, with ready-to-go team collaboration and ultra-fast knowledge-based modeling.
ENOVIA Collaborative Enterprise Sourcing (CES) fully immerses sourcing within the PLM processes, delivering seamless collaboration and cross-functional information sharing that optimizes the selection and management of components, suppliers and manufacturers. ENOVIA CES drives enterprise financial/purchasing objectives in the engineering domain and optimizes design by using sourcing information early in the design cycle while improving the management of issues such as obsolescence and hazardous material. Benefits include better enterprise re-use management, reduced risk when introducing new parts and products, and reduced decision iterations between sourcing and engineering.
ENOVIA 3D Live, meanwhile, addresses the challenges of driving innovation and market differentiation with tools that allow creators to imagine, collaborators to share and consumers to access product knowledge. With ENOVIA 3D Live, innovation is everywhere. Functions include 3D PLM Search, for searching heterogeneous PLM data sources to pinpoint exactly what you want to find; 3D PLM Navigation, which leverages patented 3D navigation technology to enable quick and intuitive browsing through assemblies and parts; 3D PLM Compass for accessing contextual PLM information to guide users to the right content; 3D PLM Heads-Up for dynamic 3D sharing and co-navigation that overlays your partners’ transparent snapshots on your work context; and 3D PLM Contextual Buddy List, which automatically locates the project participants associated with each part and instantly connects them for discussions and advance design decisions.
You’ll be hearing much more about ENOVIA 3D Live in the months ahead. But we are confident it represents one of the most exciting new applications of Dassault’s R&D investment, made possible by the continuing support of our loyal and expanding customer base. 3D Live turns PLM data into business intelligence, enabling on demand 3D collaboration that leverages a unique user experience based on an efficient search of PLM information and navigation simplicity. 3D Live is an important step forward in our ongoing quest to provide all enterprise users with a single environment for all of the PLM information required to understand, collaborate and make knowledgeable decisions in today’s globally distributed environment.