French Yacht Architectural Firm Berret-Racoupeau Chooses PLM Solutions from IBM and Dassault Systèmes

Prestigious naval architectural office to develop future yachts with CATIA V5 collaborative digital mockup

Paris, France – May 19, 2004 – IBM and Dassault Systèmes (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) today announced that Berret-Racoupeau Yacht Design, one of France’s largest yacht architectural firms, has selected their Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions for development of its new boat designs.

A prestigious name in the internationally-renowned French recreational boat industry, Berret-Racoupeau specializes in the design of serial production sailboats, luxury sailboats, and racing boats. The choice of IBM PLM Shipbuilding Solutions, developed by Dassault Systèmes, is an important step in the firm’s 30-year commitment to service, innovation, comfort, and performance. Co-founder Jean Berret has designed a large number of winning racing sailboats and has played a key role in the success of major industry players such as Bénéteau, Fountaine-Pajout, and Wauquiez.

With IBM PLM Solutions’ CATIA V5 naval architect package, Berret-Racoupeau will have in a single solution all the design tools currently only available in separate, specialized applications. CATIA V5 will eliminate the difficulty of merging product data from different sources, enable concurrent engineering in a collaborative 3D development environment, and facilitate reuse of existing data for the design of boats within the same product line.

“In order to design the wide and various range of boats we design, we are obliged to use a series of specialized, yet separate tools,” said Olivier Racoupeau, associate chairman, Berret-Racoupeau. “With the industry solution approach of Dassault Systèmes and IBM, we can optimize and integrate our design process. The integration of naval architectural design principles within CATIA V5 enables us to propose more complete and innovative project studies, with the added benefit of data continuity.”

"What the marine industry needs is a simple and affordable way to design complicated structures," said Jean Berret, associate chairman, Berret-Racoupeau. "CATIA V5 is easy to use and allows us to design and validate space, fit, function and appearance of the different parts of a boat before it goes into production. An additional benefit is that these virtual models can be rapidly modified giving us greater flexibility to create innovative yacht designs in multiple versions that satisfy even our most demanding customers."

“One of the most labor-intensive, costly and error-prone activities in shipbuilding is design,” said Klaus Schaefer, vice president, IBM Product Lifecycle Management, Europe Middle East and Africa. “With IBM PLM Solutions, we give designers better ways to innovate and communicate design intent to builders, owners and subcontractors. By using our powerful collaborative solutions, clients such as Berret-Racoupeau can redirect the time spent producing drawings into innovative vessel designs that address market demand.”

“We developed the CATIA V5 naval architect package to give firms such as Berret-Racoupeau revolutionary design features,” said Arnaud Poujardieu, director, Dassault Systèmes Solutions France, in charge of implementation at Berret-Racoupeau. “For example, the software automatically takes into account technical specifications of standard components such as the boat’s mass and center of gravity to calculate optimum stability and balance. It’s a cutting-edge way to design projects that increases design quality, reduces development time, and cuts costs.”