CARAT DUCHATELET: The Automotive Magician Goes

CARAT DUCHATELET SA is a Belgian company located in Liège which was founded over thirty years ago and employs about a hundred people. Its main activity is the transformation of first class vehicles, mostly Mercedes S Class, Maybach, Rolls Royce, Bentley, and Range Rover.

These transformations include vehicle stretching, roof raising, armoring and interior fitting. The Middle East remains the company’s most important market with 60% of the total revenue, followed by the East European countries including Russia representing 25%, Africa 10% and the rest of the world 5%. The turnover in 2004 was approximately 13 million Euros.

PERFECTION WITH CATIA V5 ...
As a designer of exclusive automobiles, CARAT DUCHATELET is obsessed with perfection to the slightest detail. The company integrates the most up-to-date technologies along with the old traditions of automotive craftsmanship in order to satisfy the most demanding needs and the most refined art of living. Its clients are not VIPs but VVIPs (Very Very Important Persons)! For many years CARAT DUCHATELET has had amongst its clients many statesmen, royal families, ministers, ambassadors, businessmen or high ranking personalities. Its clients buy the vehicles then ask CARAT DUCHATELET to transform them.

“We do not have any direct competition on this market of excellence. The American or European competitors work differently and with lower requirements. For example, in the case of armoring a vehicle, we work at the highest level of armoring certification that is accepted in civil defense. And we are never in competition with the automotive manufacturers since we offer products they do not have,” explains Christophe François, Manager, Engineering, Research and Development.

In September 2004, the new management who had taken over in 2001 was eager to develop the company while expanding the high-end image corresponding to its clients’ image. The ambitions became increasingly greater with new projects under study in the military area.

To support this new direction, the company decided to change its industrial development tool for a more efficient software with a strong image in the automotive industry. “Previously we were working with the Microstation software which was indeed 3D but had its own limitations, was not easy to use and not very cost-effective. We needed an efficient 3D tool, recognized in the automotive world, and which had been tried and tested,” states Christophe François. A study was then conducted at CARAT DUCHATELET, and Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA V5 solution was selected.

“The difference in the sheet metal area helped us to obtain significant gains in cost-effectiveness. As each car is unique for us, we needed to considerably reduce the design times and costs: with reverse engineering, we are now able to process the clouds of points, and we can progress to very rapidly design the entire armoring in CAD,” says Christophe François.

When a vehicle to be transformed is received by CARAT DUCHATELET, the company does not have the manufacturer’s data, in most cases. The vehicle must be entirely dismantled in order to be re-digitalized. Many parts must be designed again, such as the hinges, the door stops, or the windows which have to be re-dimensioned. “To give you an idea, the Maybach we receive weighs 2.8 tons, and is delivered weighing 4.4 tons fully armored. You can imagine the changes we make in order for the car to support this weight while making sure nothing is visible from the outside. Today about three months of work are considered necessary to carry out such a transformation. With regards to vehicle stretching, each demand is specific and unique. We can stretch a car by 25 cm in the rear doors, 100 cm in the central part, or 125 cm, with or without a raised roof by 5 or 10 cm, etc.,” adds Christophe François.

“What I like best in the CATIA V5 solution is the automatic and associative drawing generation. The use of parts calculation by finite elements is much more powerful even if this operation is longer. We have reduced our design times: previously, for instance, we needed an hour and a half to unfold a part, and now we can do this in 5 seconds!” explains Eric Appelmans, one of the designers.

IT’S EVEN BETTER WITH SMARTEAM!
In addition to CATIA V5, CARAT DUCHATELET decided in 2005 to select a data management solution: SMARTEAM. “We needed a real communication tool enabling us to rapidly spread the information within the company, while giving access to the data to the various departments such as purchasing, logistics, finance, marketing and communication. There is an enormous demand from these departments for data, and we must have these always updated and available in the latest version. SMARTEAM also allows us to have a real traceability of our materials, which important as we want to link each vehicle with an armoring number in order to be able to rapidly and easily find the data, in the case of after-sales follow-up.” says Christophe François.

To ensure optimal deployment, the teams of the engineering office at CARAT DUCHATELET followed a training of 5 days for the CATIA V5 solution and 3 days for the SMARTEAM solution. “We wanted to be operational as quickly as possible, so we trusted our partner Rand Belgium. We have a true partnership relationship with them, far from just being a client/supplier relationship. We appreciate their reactivity and proximity: a telephone call often helps solve a problem, and the technical team is always ready to come to our offices if this is necessary,” adds Christophe François.

CONCLUSION
CARAT DUCHATELET is counting on its new PLM environment to develop new markets. CATIA and SMARTEAM enable this company to offer its clients even more quality and performance in the work it performs. Its leadership ambition is to become the reference in this very specific segment of the “tailor-made” automobile. Christophe François concludes: “Today with the PLM solutions from Dassault Systèmes, we have been able to substantially reduce our design times and development costs. We expect even more, in particular, we wish to increase our reactivity by producing an armored vehicle in 5 months, and win new markets”