Invacare Reduces New Product Development Time by 25% with SMARTEAM

SMARTEAM helps global medical-products manufacturer develop new products faster, better, and more cost-effectively

Kfar Saba, Israel – January 13, 2004 – SmarTeam Corporation Ltd., a Dassault Systèmes company (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) announced today that world- leading home medical products provider Invacare has implemented a collaborative PLM system based on SMARTEAM, including modules for automated document management, collaborative design, and web-based worldwide sourcing and procurement.

“We have realized quite a boost in productivity,” said Neal Curran, vice president of Engineering and Product Development at Invacare. “We have reduced our design cycle time from 12 to nine months. A better design platform, improved access to design data, and more efficient data management and documentation allow our engineers to continue to support operational initiatives as well as increase work on new product development.”

The SMARTEAM solution has enabled Invacare to fully automate its document processing. Invacare employees can now access product design data from any of its many globally- distributed facilities in a standard data format, generate design drawings automatically, share design data with colleagues, vendors, and suppliers, and create a collaborative environment linking its remote sites.

“We needed a good PDM system to manage, document, and leverage our large volume of complex product data,” said Tom Herb, manager of Invacare’s Corporate Documentation Group. “SMARTEAM solutions have definitely allowed us to get closer to a true collaborative environment with our remote facilities and enabled us to make tremendous headway in making our documentation efforts more efficient.”

cSHARE, a SMARTEAM reseller and integrator based in the U.S. Midwest, helped Invacare define its CAD and PDM standards and develop strategies for working with internal users and external suppliers. The reseller is working with Invacare to further expand the SMARTEAM solution across a range of different product development and lifecycle collaboration needs. cSHARE recently published a case study on the Invacare implementation.