NKK Partners with Dassault Systemes and IBM for Shipbuilding PLM

To Reduce Ship Design Lead Time by 20 to 30%

 

Suresnes (France) and Tokyo (Japan) – March 12, 2002 – IBM and Dassault Systemes (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris : #13065, DSY.PA) today announced that NKK Corporation, one of Asia’s leading shipbuilding companies, has signed an agreement with IBM Product Lifecycle Management and Dassault Systemes around PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) for shipbuilding. <br/>

 

 

PLM solutions based on V5 architecture developed by Dassault Systemes and marketed by IBM worldwide, is setting future industry standard which help shipbuilding companies to reduce the development period as well as further improve their products.  According to the partnership, NKK will work with Dassault Systemes and the IBM Shipbuilding team to establish new methodologies that take advantage of PLM technologies.  Through trial deployment at the outfit design, NKK will define and test the special needs of their specific ship design activity and will submit these requirements to Dassault Systemes and IBM. <br/>

 

 

For full operational deployment forecasted for 2004/2005, NKK will launch this innovative project step-by-step, starting in 2002 with a trial deployment of CATIA V5 on the IBM Intellistation platform to evaluate CATIA V5 for outfit design. <br/>

 

 

The Need for PLM in the shipbuilding industry <br/>

 

 

The decision to implement PLM for shipbuilding by Dassault Systemes and IBM is based on several factors. First, most of the product design technologies that will be used, have already been deployed and validated by other types of manufacturing industries, and can be adapted to the shipbuilding sector. Moreover, Dassault Systemes and IBM have a proven track record in the shipbuilding industry owing to several existing partnerships in the admiralty, marine education, and commercial shipbuilding. Finally, owing to increased international competition along with the need to build more value-added sophisticated ships, the worldwide shipbuilding industry has seen the advantages of working in 3D, and is eager to implement PLM solutions, which will blend state-of-the-art technologies with current shipbuilding methodologies.<br/>

 

 

Decisional Factors for Partnership<br/>

 

 

Up to now, NKK has been using several different CAD systems; the in-house system for the ship hull design, and several systems including CATIA V4 for outfit design.   In order to access cutting-edge technologies and reducing in-house CAD system development activities, the company started to evaluate several high-end commercial mechanical CAD systems – including CATIA V5 - as well as other ship design systems available on the market in its outfit design. During benchmarking, NKK was impressed by CATIA V5’s strong customization functions, such as the capacity to easily integrate attributes. NKK’s benchmarking study also demonstrated that the simple migration of data from CATIA V4 to CATIA V5 would allow them to capitalize years of data collection and know-how, and insure a smooth transition V5 in the outfit design process.<br/>

 

 

 

"The shipbuilding industry is a relatively small from an OEM perspective, which in turn makes it extremely competitive,” said John MacKrell, Shipbuilding analyst, CIMdata. "The end-to-end product lifecycle management solutions provided by IBM and Dassault Systemes will give NKK the tools they need to achieve the distinct advantage of faster time to market - a crucial win factor for a shipbuilding OEM."

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Kimio Kitano, General Manager, Ships & Offshore Structures Planning Dept., NKK, said, "In the shipbuilding industry, lead time reduction is very critical to maintain and reinforce our competitiveness, and in this perspective, NKK is hoping to reduce its current average lead time from 9 months to about 6-7 months with the deployment of 3D PLM solutions.  In our selection of a system capable of overcoming the lead time reduction difficulties and to fulfill the particular needs of the ship design, we looked for a solution containing of course high performance modeling functions, a relative openness to respond to our special needs, and high extension possibilities. We hope that CATIA V5 fulfills these requirements with the support of the IBM platforms and implementation teams, and we all expect it will become the best matching solution for NKK."

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Francis Bernard, Dassault Systemes Executive Committee Advisor, commented, "The ship building industry is one of the most important target segments for Dassault Systemes. We are very honored that NKK formed an alliance with Dassault Systemes to deliver PLM solutions for shipbuilding based on the current and future deliveries. The fact that NKK, Dassault Systemes and IBM are jointly starting the project is an important milestone to consolidate CATIA V5 positioning as the standard solution in the shipbuilding industry."

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Ed Petrozelli, General Manager, IBM Product Lifecycle Management, commented,