Astrium Embraces DELMIA Methodology from Dassault Systemes

Next step in aerospace manufacturer's move toward Dassault Systemes 3D PLM

 

Troy, Michigan (USA), July 3, 2002 - DELMIA Corp., a Dassault Systemes company (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) today announced that its systems are to form part of space manufacturer Astrium’s digital product realization strategy. Tightly integrated with its sister product CATIA, DELMIA is to be deployed on the company’s new and ongoing programs.

A decade ago, it took many years for a spacecraft to move from the ‘drawing board’ to the launch pad.  The time to market period has now decreased to approximately two years and there is continuing pressure for further reductions despite dramatic increases in the size and complexity of projects.  Astrium therefore decided to investigate ways to reduce delivery risk, cycle times, and costs.

With help from leading universities, the DELMIA toolset was evaluated as part of an overall digital design for manufacture initiative.  This benchmarking and best practice study focused not only on the various products and their associated process capabilities within the virtual factory or zone, but also on how best to implement the different tools so they could directly improve profitability in the context of product life cycle management.  This is known within Astrium as a Design Anywhere, Build Anywhere strategy.

Elfed Roberts, Systems Manager at Astrium says, “We knew right from the beginning that we did not want to implement DELMIA’s various virtual assembly tools as just a ‘point solution’.  Though our thoughts on how both Envision and Ergo could be made to work for us altered over the course of the study, as the systems continued to develop, we knew that they could be used to both capture and manage a ‘knowledge based’ approach as well as affect unambiguous communication. This approach also has the effect of being able to drive standardization and common processes at multiple sites and in multiple countries.”

“Telecoms space craft tend to be large one off complex structures with limited opportunities for standardization. With DELMIA, we will be applying kinematics and logistic-type simulations at the highest level, stretching these systems to their limits,” says Roberts. “Using universities active in this field has helped us to evolve novel design-for-manufacture solutions. Only by understanding the philosophy that underpins DELMIA and CATIA could we begin to harness their capabilities to maximize the added value potential to Astrium.  Everyone has been talking about the benefits of product life cycle management for some time. I am confident that DELMIA will enable us to achieve far higher levels of design maturity much earlier in our programs and hence, mitigate risk more effectively than was previously thought possible.”