Members of AIT AdCoMS Technology project select ENOVIA to implement Innovative Advanced Configuration Best Practices

ENOVIA, IBM and the members of the technology project AIT AdCoMS (Advanced Information Technology/Advanced Configuration Management System) today announce that AdCoMS has selected ENOVIA Solutions, from ENOVIA Corp., to define and implement innovative advanced configuration management capabilities that will be delivered in future ENOVIA releases.

Paris, France, Micad, February 12, 1999--AdCoMS, a 3-year development project, is funded by the European Union under the ESPRIT initiative. Its aim is to turn the results of a project into a real aerospace industry solution supporting product development and providing immediate and significant benefits. AdCoMS has been recognised as one of the major projects in the AIT (Advanced Information Technology) Consortium initiative, which includes the major European aircraft manufacturers (Alenia, British Aerospace, CASA, Dasa), their strategic IT Vendors (IBM and ENOVIA Corp.), CSC and K&P (Kaschewski and Partners) service providers and the University of Leeds.

ENOVIA has developed an interest for collaboration with AdCoMS project because of the benefits on ENOVIA software for the whole industry: the specifications defined by AdCoMs will bring enhancements to ENOVIA Solutions in the Virtual Product Development Management (VPDM) domain, while the collaboration initiated with user partners during the project is expected to open the way to further win-win exchanges.

AdCoMS innovations will be integrated in future ENOVIA releases. This set of user-validated Best Practices will support concurrent engineering and product integration across all enterprise processes, not only in aerospace, but also for other industries such as transportation, electronics and telecommunications, shipbuilding and automotive, producing sophisticated products with life cycle and multiple variability critical characteristics.

Dr. Bernardino Chiavola, AdCoMS Project Manager, Alenia, declared: "The AdCoMS requirements result from its members’ visionary approach to satisfying the needs of the Configuration Management discipline as the product goes from requirements to "As-maintained" development. They are directly in line with the strategic direction of both ENOVIA Corp. and Dassault Systemes."

The aim is to solve the issues raised when complex products, with different configurations, are developed across many sites and by multiple enterprises. AdCoMS proposes innovations in areas such as aligning all activities to initial requirements, managing interface agreements and allowing forward and backward traceability for item interdependencies. AdCoMS users will validate how these innovative Best Practices can be applied to their companies using ENOVIA Solutions.

The choice of ENOVIA was made after an extensive evaluation of the product’s present functions and characteristics. Werner Kollmer, Dasa, explained: "ENOVIA Corp’s future Solutions and strategic products come closest to AdCoMS requirements. Key to the decision to choose ENOVIA Corp. is its unique product-process-resource model, powerful configuration handler, interoperability with CATIA and other CAD-Systems, advanced open architecture and effective software development environment."

Dave McKee from British Aerospace commented: "By aligning the ENOVIA product developments with BAe’s Business Change Program, we will significantly improve the overall efficiency of the development process."