PSA Peugeot Citroën chooses CATIA and ENOVIA VPM solutions for its Numeric Modeling Platforms

2000 engineers will conceive tomorrow’s automobiles using e-collaboration solutions from IBM Product Lifecycle Management and Dassault Systemes

 

Paris, France, July 12, 2001 - In order to get its cars to market more quickly and efficiently, PSA Peugeot Citroën decided in 1998 to implement a digital modeling strategy “Ingenum” which they unveiled publicly today.  This automotive development strategy relies heavily on ENOVIA VPM (Virtual Product Modeling), developed by Dassault Systemes (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) and sold and supported by IBM, as its primary VPM e-collaboration for its CATIA based-numeric modeling platform. <br/>

 

 

Today, ENOVIAVPM allows over 2000 users in various domains throughout PSA Peugeot Citroën’s extended enterprise to have real-time access to the 3D digital models of future vehicles created using CATIA applications.  Jean-Jacques Urban-Galindo, director of the Ingenum project, PSA Peugeot Citroën explains, “We are now in an information sharing mode. All our CATIA 3-D designs are on-line throughout every engineering stage.  As a design matures, the different development teams can collaborate with the others online.  This spans beyond the initial conception.  It includes verification of manufacturability using advanced simulation to the final manufacturing bill of materials. This dramatically reduces the time from order to delivery and makes us much more competitive, allowing us to reinforce our position as Europe’s second largest car maker.”

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The first step of the Ingenum project was to empower engineers with dynamic information. “Our ambitious strategy consisted of providing our digital modeling engineers with the ability to interface and share 3D designs on line within their teams and also with the part referencing and purchasing departments in order to reduce development time, increase cost-effectiveness, while increasing quality, as well,” continued Urban-Galindo. <br/>

 

 

Today, PSA Peugeot Citroën is reaping the benefits of this operation with streamlined processes allowing the car manufacturer to roll out appealing and competitive new models in less than two years after the initial stages of the design process. <br/>

 

 

The company is now undertaking the next phase of  its Ingenum project: the wide-scale roll-out of ENOVIA VPM e-collaboration.  Said Urban-Galindo, “We are confident that rapid and easily accessible data exchange will allow tooling and other material resource suppliers to react more quickly up and down the supply chain.”

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 Dassault Systemes, IBM and PSA Citroën worked hand-in-hand to adapt ENOVIA VPM to the complex demands of the carmaker’s automotive development teams, including specialized configuration management tools.  PSA Peugeot Citroën’s digital models are already on-line for internal usage throughout the company.  Using ENOVIA VPM, some suppliers can already reference these models on secure websites depending on extremely precise access control mechanisms allowing certain designs to be available to specifically-assigned suppliers.<br/>

 

 

 

“This joint sharing of timing-related information,” said Urban-Galindo, “will soon provide our suppliers with real-time visibility to our design changes. The faster suppliers can react to these changes, particularly materials suppliers, the greater the impact in terms of both time and cost savings as we increasingly remove time lags from the process.” <br/>

 

 

 

 

“The main goal here at Dassault is to provide businesses with solutions that  enable greater business efficiency, faster time to market, and the ability to offer more customized products, with easy access to a wealth of product and business information up and down the supply chain.  PSA Peugeot Citroën’s success proves that we are achieving this objective, ” said Etienne Droit, vice president of Marketing, Dassault Systemes.  “Ahead of the initial schedule, PSA Peugeot Citroën generalized the most competitive practices to date, such as the Digital Mock-up, Design in context and Generative Engineering. By optimizing the business processes first within the company to then extend them to its suppliers, PSA has leveraged e-business by deploying proven business practices."<br/>

 

 

 

Jean-Marc Deshays, Director West Region, IBM Product Lifecycle Management, commented, “IBM and Dassault Systemes now provide the automotive industry with total integration of information throughout the lifecycle of a product from design, through manufacture and distribution, to end customers and web-linked service providers.  This new generation of business solutions comes under the label Product Lifecycle Management (PLM).”

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