Europe’s Leading Space Company selects Product Lifecycle Management solutions from IBM and Dassault Systemes

11/13/2001

Astrium Space Infrastructure reinforces its development program with an IBM e-business infrastructure featuring CATIA and ENOVIAVPM solutions from Dassault Systemes

Bremen, Germany and Paris, France.  13 November, 2001 - The Space Infrastructure business division of ASTRIUM GmbH today announced it has selected IBM and Dassault Systemes (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) Product Lifecycle Management solutions, including Dassault Systemes’ ENOVIAVPM solutions at its three design and manufacturing sites. These sites, already up and running with Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA 3D design solutions, are the locations for development for the international space station and are already equipped with CATIA 3D design workstations used by their design teams, which are comprised of over 100 engineers.

ENOVIAVPM, the world’s leading collaborative virtual product development management solution, will allow ASTRIUM to share design information in real time both within the company and with other members of the international space development consortium.

ASTRIUM’s Space Infrastructure business division develops, integrates and operates orbital systems, transportation and propulsion systems, in addition to avionics. This includes comprehensive involvement in the development and construction of the multi-billion dollar International Space Station. ASTRIUM is responsible for the design, development and operation of the Columbus Research Laboratory, Europe’s major contribution to the Space Station.

ASTRIUM uses CATIA 3D virtual reality models to replace costly traditional scale models of complex portions of the International space station. This enables design and production teams to analyze and review construction in a virtual environment.  This information is then shared among the contributors and suppliers of the International Space Station using ENOVIA solutions.

ASTRIUM’s collaboration with IBM goes back to 1990, relying on CATIA 3D design applications to develop their rocket launchers.  With the growing success of this program, they chose to complement CATIA with ENOVIAVPM, allowing collaboration and design sharing of the virtual models created on CATIA.  In 2000, to further support the growing complexity of ASTRIUM’s space projects, including the new Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to be used to deliver up to seven tons of cargo to the Space Station, the company chose to implement a pilot program using ENOVIAVPM enabling the company to control costs and reduce time to market through more efficient design collaboration. This pilot program demonstrated ENOVIAVPM’s ease of use and easy adaptability to ASTRIUM’s existing IT infrastructure and processes.

 

 

Archi Dreyer, Head of Engineering Systems, Information Management, ASTRIUM Space Infrastructure Division, explained, “ During the pilot test, we saw how the features available on ENOVIAVPM, such as Digital Mock-Up, will allow our design team to share an incredible amount of information about our space projects with our partners around the world.  Since we are dealing with brand new concepts that must integrate so much scientific data, design modifications and improvements occur quite often.  With the ENOVIAVPM solution, these design changes will be updated immediately, automatically ensuring that all our extended product development and production teams will be using the same correct data.  To be able to track design changes for projects this complex is key to our success because it allows us to reduce the design and development costs.”  

 

 

Following this successful pilot, ASTRIUM has now begun the rollout of ENOVIAVPM at its primary design and manufacturing locations in Bremen, Munich and the Lampoldshausen Test-Site near Stuttgart.  Once this multi-site configuration is in place, ASTRIUM will then connect its suppliers to the product life cycle through ENOVIAVPM’s distributed collaboration capability.

 

 

Ed Petrozelli, general manager, IBM Product Lifecycle Management, said, “After more than a decade of working together, IBM continues to support ASTRIUM’s dynamic and growing business with technology and expertise we adapt to their specific needs.  This includes workstations, servers, software and services.  For example, IBM Global Services is handling the ENOVIAVPM installation, user training and customization to create further optimize ASTRIUM’s business processes. IBM is quickly reaching its goal to be a one-stop shop for e-business solutions tailored to the extended global enterprise.”   

 

 

 

About ASTRIUM

All the space you need. Astrium , Europe's no. 1 space company and an industry world leader, is a joint venture owned by Europe's leading aerospace and defense companies, EADS with a 75% holding and BAE Systems with 25%. Astrium's activities cover the whole spectrum of the space business, with expertise in all applications: Earth observation and science, telecommunications, ground systems, and military programmes, launch vehicles and orbital infrastructure. The Company boasts some of the best appointed and most advanced design, manufacture and test facilities in the space industry and a workforce of over 8 000 highly skilled people at its sites in France, Germany, the UK and Spain. Astrium continues to build on its national and regional identities, experience and expertise to create worldwide excellence. Underpinned by strong corporate vision and values, business divisions operate across national boundaries, facilitating the exchange of information and best practice, whilst respecting both local and national interests.

 

Discover more about ASTRIUM at - http://www.astrium-space.com

About About IBM

IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM Sales & Distribution, which supports more than a dozen key industries worldwide, works with companies of all sizes around the world to deploy the full range of IBM technologies.  The fastest way to get more information about IBM is through the IBM home page at www.ibm.com

 

 

 

About About Dassault Systèmes

Dassault Systemes (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) is the premier global software developer for the CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM market, providing companies with e-business solutions to implement their digital enterprise, thus creating and simulating the entire product life cycle from initial concept to product in service. CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA solutions support industry-specific business processes to help unleash creativity and innovation, reduce development cycle time, improve quality, competitiveness and shareholder value: CATIA supports the digital product definition and simulation, DELMIA provides solutions to define and simulate lean digital manufacturing processes and ENOVIA delivers enterprise solutions that manage a comprehensive, collaborative and distributed model of the digital product, processes and resources. The combined integration creates the Digital Product life cycle Pipeline, supporting reuse of corporate knowledge. SolidWorks and SmarTeam, as Dassault Systemes companies, offer respectively 3D design-centric and TeamPDM software solutions based on Windows. Spatial, also part of Dassault Systemes family, is a market-leading provider of world-class 3D software components and services (for 3D modelling, visualization, and interoperability) to meet the requirements of 3D in Internet-based e-commerce and B2B applications.

 

Information about Dassault Systemes is available at - http://www.3ds.com