Dassault Systems V5 - Not Just a CAD System
By Mark E. Van Horne, The Boeing Company

If your company is using the Computer Aided Design (CAD) system inside V5, called CATIA you probably found it much more powerful and easier to use than V4 CATIA. But if you're only using V5 for its CAD system, you're missing the real power of V5.

V5 is based on a set of tools that support how companies actually do product development. The complete product development process consists of more than just designing the saleable product; it also involves designing a manufacturing process, laying out production facilities, designing tools and machines, and integrating all the consumable and non-consumable resources used in the manufacturing process. It involves managing a complex business process which begins with a glimmer of an idea, through a detailed definition phase, to production and delivery, and finally to customer support and final product retirement. It may also include collaboration with a global network of partners and suppliers. And through the whole product life cycle process, there's a requirement to manage all the product, process and resource data generated by the process.

At the Boeing Company, we believe the real power of V5 lies in its ability to provide an integrated environment to define, optimize, manage and integrate products, processes and resources throughout the entire product life cycle across the extended global enterprise. That statement says a lot, so let's look at each piece:

...Define, Optimize, Manage, and Integrate...
V5 has a complete set of authoring tools to define products, processes and resources. The CATIA suite is used to define the geometry of physical items including the salable product along with tools and machines used in the production process. The geometry creation process is augmented by the inclusion of tools to perform relational design, capture of best design practices through Knowledgeware applications, and the ability to create fully annotated and attributed 3D solids to eliminate the need for creating traditional drawings. Included in the V5 suite is a full range of tools to analyze and optimize product designs. Similarly, the DELMIA suite is used to define manufacturing processes and includes a wide range of analysis tools to ensure development of an optimized manufacturing process. The ENOVIA suite is used to manage business processes through workflow and actions, and also provides configuration management and storage capability for product definition data. The PPR Hub in the DELMIA suite is used to manage product, process and resources from the view of the manufacturing process. By combining the tools for definition, optimization and management in the V5 suite, it enables product development teams to collaborate and integrate their work in a way that ensures physical, functional, manufacturing and support integrity.

...Products, Processes and Resources...
In order to ensure that a product can be successfully brought to market, it must be integrated with the manufacturing process, and the resources used in the manufacturing process must be compatible with the process and must be designed to ensure compliance with the product's engineering requirements. The ability to integrate products, processes and resources is the key to a company's ability to create value, and to sustain its success and profitability. V5 allows functionally diverse groups of people involved in the PLM process to participate in product development from their own unique perspective to integrate their activities. V5 users include not just product designers, but also manufacturing engineers, tool designers, NC programmers, quality assurance engineers, production planners, machine designers, building designers, industrial engineers, skilled trades people, business process managers, suppliers and customers working together using a single steam of digital data and a common set of tools to do their work.

V5 incorporates a powerful set of tools to support the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) process for all users. Product designers use CATIA to design and analyze products while using ENOVIA to store product and configuration data. Those involved in manufacturing process design can import product and resource design data from ENOVIA into the Product/Process/Resource (PPR) Hub and then use the DELMIA suite to develop manufacturing processes. The DELMIA suite allows manufacturing process planners to create and analyze factory layouts, create detailed process plans using the digital models of the products and resources, and create graphical work instructions with annotations to be used on the factory floor. Standard processes from a process library can be applied to a manufacturing plan reducing the amount of process definition work while ensuring that known robust processes are used to the greatest extent possible. Manufacturing resources designers can use CATIA to design buildings, tools, fixtures, machines, and transportation equipment, and can simulate their use in a virtual manufacturing environment in DELMIA. Resource libraries can be established in DELMIA and can be used to complete the resource management process by identifying such things as the quantity and type of skill requirements, consumable resources, and other resources used in production.

...Throughout the entire product life cycle...
The lifecycle of a product begins when somebody has an idea, and extends through engineering, production, delivery, use and retirement. V5 has the ability to manage every phase of a product's life cycle and allows everyone involved in the process to work together concurrently. In the early phases of the lifecycle, V5 can be used to develop concept models and manage configuration trade studies. Production engineers can develop factory layouts and analyze throughput capability, and resource requirements can be identified to support capability studies. As the product lifecycle matures, V5 is used to create the actual product design, authoritative manufacturing plans, and a definition of specific resource requirements. The production process can be run in a "virtual" mode to ensure producibility of the product, and work out problems before any hardware actually appears on the factory floor. During the production phase, product engineers can make product improvements and production engineers can make process improvements, and link their actions together by using the relational design capabilities in CATIA while sharing their data through ENOVIA. While the product is in service in the marketplace, customer support engineers can use V5 to develop maintenance and repair processes using the same methods and data as their colleagues on the product development teams. Throughout the lifecycle, everyone involved with the product definition, production, and support can use V5.

...Across the extended global enterprise...
The extended enterprise is more than just the Original Equipment Manufacturer. It also includes a network of global partners and suppliers. Commerce is becoming increasingly global with the equivalent of 1.2 trillion dollars of international transactions happening every day. The emerging business model for a typical OEM is to become an integrator and supply chain manager collaborating with a network of global partners and suppliers who provide complete assemblies and systems. V5 enables members of the global enterprise to collaborate to ensure complete and integrated product definition by allowing everyone involved in the product lifecycle management process use common tools with a shared product data.

Where does PLM go from here?
The PLM vision is clear: Functionally diverse global teams collaborating to bring new products to market more effectively than ever before using V5 as the key technology enabler. Leading companies around the world today are beginning to use V5 to integrate their products, processes and resources in the aerospace, automotive, industrial and architectural markets, and realize the vision of PLM. In the future, PLM systems will become increasingly connected and integrated with the other main components of the global enterprise including Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Manufacturing Execution System (MES) to provide unprecedented levels of effectiveness at providing the products demanded by global markets.