Clarion Electronics Cuts Design Time in Half with Product Lifecycle Management from IBM and Dassault Systèmes

Malaysian subsidiary of global car-audio electronics manufacturer reduces design cycle time by 50% with CATIA V5

Petaling Jaya, Malaysia and Paris, France – December 15, 2003 -– IBM and Dassault Systèmes (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) today announced that Clarion Malaysia’s use of their Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions has led to a 50% reduction in its design cycle time, and helped the car-audio electronics manufacturer to bring products to market faster. Clarion deployed PLM technology from IBM and Dassault Systèmes to streamline product development and penetrate new markets.

IBM PLM Solutions, with CATIA V5, the world’s leading collaborative product development application developed by Dassault Systèmes, has enabled Clarion to create new markets through innovative product development, deliver new products to market before the competition, continuously improve its existing product lines, and sustain quality despite its rapidly changing product offerings. Clarion has become a fully integrated manufacturing center that is now maximizing profitability and increasing consumer loyalty through innovative, high quality audio systems.

“The establishment of new market categories requires insight into recognizing consumer trends, shorter turnaround time, and quality products,” said Toshiyuki Nakazaki, director of Research and Development, Clarion. “PLM solutions from IBM and Dassault Systèmes have proven instrumental in capturing, managing and sharing corporate know-how to ensure compliance of product and processes with corporate standards and best practices in terms of integration and optimization.”

Clarion attributes the gain in productivity to the company’s migration of its core Computer-Aided-Design system to CATIA V5 three years ago. CATIA V5 is renowned for its powerful capability to facilitate the design, simulation, production, and information management of complex systems.

“The PLM solution from IBM and Dassault Systèmes has benefited Clarion in cutting cost and improving our time-to-market. Our design team is able to complete a model and deliver it to a customer in nine months, instead of fourteen,” said Nakazaki. “CATIA has also enhanced our productivity, product quality, and the time taken for tooling preparations as product data is shared with vendors early on in the product development cycle. This collaborative work with vendors has reduced Clarion’s tooling preparation time from 2.5 months to one month.”

“The ability to react quickly to fast-changing customer trends is critical in the electronics industry,” said Yannick Wittner, director Electronics & Electrical PLM Practices, Dassault Systèmes. “The time savings Clarion has achieved with CATIA V5 makes the company even more competitive by enabling its designers to spend more time on design optimization and product innovation.”

Toshiyuki Nakazaki added that the new CATIA V5 interface is user-friendly and that his design team is more motivated using the new platform, resulting in higher productivity among individual designers.