Bosch Braking Systems Begins ENOVIA Project to Enhance Global Development and Innovation

Bosch Braking Systems announced today it intends to enhance and speed product innovation and development by evaluating ENOVIAVPM (Virtual Product Modeling) software solution from IBM and Dassault Systemes.

South Bend, Indiana (USA), and Drancy (France), June 30, 1999--This pilot project is being conducted in conjunction with a global design project at facilities in South Bend, Indiana, and Drancy, France. The program will include implementation of e-business services and support from IBM.

Bosch Braking Systems also wants to better leverage its development tools, including CATIA, which it has been using since 1986, developed by Dassault Systemes, marketed and supported worldwide by IBM Engineering Solutions.

Bosch is one of the largest industrial companies in Germany. Bosch scientists, engineers and technicians are at work around the world on the development, enhancement and reliability of existing automotive products -- such as brake systems and components, fuel-injection technology and driver information systems -- and on the development of new products and systems in areas as diverse as thermotechnology.

As part of the project, ENOVIAVPM will be installed on a limited basis at South Bend and in Drancy and other European locations. Upon successful completion of this pilot phase, Bosch expects to receive 20-25 % reduction in product design segment of the development process.

With the increased collaboration, Bosch is relying on ENOVIAVPM to reduce its component complexity while simultaneously offering its OEM customers products tailored to their vehicles. Using ENOVIAVPM, the company expects to improve the quality of the design while enabling a reduction in development costs and a more efficient development cycle with faster design response times.

"ENOVIAVPM will enable the facilities in South Bend and Drancy to share conceptual designs in ways not previously possible," said Dr. Sigmar Micke, vice president of engineering and the leader of the Bosch Foundation Brake development organization. "Our goals are to extend our collaborative efforts throughout all levels of product development while giving our designers the ability to be more creative. We want to shorten the entire product development cycle and increase productivity across the enterprise to meet our customers' needs."

The ENOVIA Solutions are part of a framework called Product Development Management II. ENOVIAVPM strengthens and encourages the ad hoc, unpredictable process of innovation, but in parallel with a structured production environment.

It makes product information available to all participants in the product development process, enabling details about the production process to be determined at the same time the product itself is being conceived and designed. By understanding the consequences of a design on the manufacturing process, better products can be designed at less cost and faster.

Creativity and innovation are encouraged and expanded because dozens of product alternatives and iterations -- along with simulations of the product's performance -- can be reviewed, evaluated, managed and tracked. This helps ensure only the best proposals and designs move forward. Poor ideas and design errors, such as part interference, can be quickly identified and changed or discarded without constructing costly physical prototypes. Earlier recognition that a change is needed means it is less costly to make the change. More time is available to conceive of better parts or products.

With ENOVIAVPM, information from a company's various computer-aided design systems, the product data management (PDM) system and the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system are linked and distributed as needed for decision making by employees, suppliers and vendors.

"The ENOVIA software helps deliver manufacturing enterprise productivity on an unprecedented scale," said Stephen Murdoch, IBM global PDM II business director. "IBM's worldwide sales and services organization combined with our e-business solutions help companies become more competitive digital enterprises -- integrating for the first time a better way to create products and manage production."

Joel Lemke, ENOVIA chief executive officer, added: "The ENOVIA solution offers a way for companies to achieve quality, time and cost benefits throughout the entire product development lifecycle. Those benefits can be translated to higher profitability, expanded markets and market share."

Adapting the PDM II concept means companies can optimize how products -- from hand-held consumer goods to nuclear submarines -- are conceived, designed and built.