Audi Accelerates Digital Vehicle Assembly Planning with DELMIA Solutions

Ingolstadt and Fellbach, Germany – April 2, 2003 - Digital manufacturing solutions provider Delmia Corp., a Dassault Systèmes company (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), today announced that Audi AG, the luxury division of German carmaker Volkswagen AG, has selected DELMIA’s Process Engineer solution for the planning of digital vehicle assemblies at its Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm plants.

DELMIA Process Engineer enables manufacturers to identify process risks at the conceptual product design phase. By relating product to process and manufacturing resource data, including the plant layout, Process Engineer helps users avoid planning mistakes and obtain a precise overview of the required investment costs, production space, and manpower at an early stage. This translates into design for manufacture, quality improvements, production flexibility, and reduced time to market.

“Audi required a digital factory in which each step of the production process can be fully simulated to further improve the planning of assembly processes and the quality of our cars,” said Ingo Chladek, virtual assembly project manager at Audi AG. “When Audi conducted extensive benchmark testing in 2000 relative to this project, DELMIA was selected as the solution provider of choice because it offered the highest-performance software and the required process know-how to implement exactly what we needed.”

“Process Engineer enables Audi to validate the feasibility of new projects quickly and accurately,” said Yves Coze, vice president DELMIA Sales and Marketing EMEA. “The ability to determine process cycle times, cost estimates, and potential bottlenecks in advance with simulation gives Audi a strong competitive edge over its competitors. DELMIA takes the guess work out of manufacturing engineering.”

Since the purchase of the DELMIA software, Audi vehicle assembly project teams in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm have been introduced to a new planning methodology, followed by implementation of Process Engineer. The first phase of the methodology focused on the new approach to design, organization and content with a specific focus on adapting the software to the Audi environment. During the second phase, Audi personnel rolled out major changes to organizational procedures that the teams considered necessary in order to realize the effectiveness and productivity associated with the software’s use.

The broad DELMIA base at Audi includes more than 100 Process Engineer seats across multiple departments. As part of its ongoing strategy to further link product development with process planning, and its objective of No More Physical Cars without Digital Validation, Audi intends to purchase and implement additional DELMIA products to ultimately reach complete virtual validation of all manufacturing processes, from initial concept through production. Audi is currently discussing extending the software to additional manufacturing areas, including the paint shop and DELMIA DPM Assembly for process detailing and simulation.