Purdue University Teams With IBM and Dassault Systèmes to Support New Product Lifecycle Management Center of Excellence

New center promotes the advancement of PLM innovation

West Lafayette, Ind., USA and Paris, France, November 4, 2004 - IBM and Dassault Systèmes (Nasdaq: DASTY, Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) today announced their support for a new Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Center of Excellence at Purdue University. The Center will provide PLM education and research, develop PLM training materials and house a demonstration facility.

The university’s PLM program will concentrate on complex product development and lifecycle management issues, such as design optimization in a grid environment, secure supply chain collaboration, knowledge-based systems for dynamic maintenance, structural diagnostics and prognostics, and product-health management.

Working with corporations in the aerospace, pharmaceutical, consumer products, manufacturing and healthcare industries, the Center of Excellence will share its findings in case studies and best practice projects. The Center is already working on PLM research projects with Boeing, DaimlerChrysler, and Eli Lilly and Company.

The new Center will provide:

• Educational PLM experiences for undergraduate and graduate students in PLM implementation strategies and applications so that they can help industry successfully integrate PLM as a business strategy. More than 700 students at Purdue's School of Technology, which produces more Bachelor of Science graduates than any other technology school in the U.S., are expected to use the Center annually.
• A demonstration center where components of PLM can be researched, studied, implemented and shared.

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As founding members of the Center, IBM and Dassault Systèmes are donating PLM solutions, including the full suite of IBM PLM Solutions developed by Dassault Systèmes: CATIA, for digital creation and engineering; ENOVIA, for product data and lifecycle management and decision support; and SMARTEAM, for product lifecycle management; along with DELMIA, a Dassault Systèmes solution for digital manufacturing and production.

IBM also has given Purdue a Shared University Research Award to outfit the center with IBM xSeries and pSeries eServers and Intellistation workstations. In total, there will be 50 leading-edge workstations—each with IBM dual flat-panel displays—and three banks of server equipment to support the PLM environment.

“The School of Technology has recently completed work on PLM-related curriculum materials,” said Gary Bertoline, associate vice president for Discovery Resources, Purdue University. “In addition, a number of students have been hired as interns during the past summer because of their experience using PLM tools in courses taught in the School of Technology.”

“To remain competitive manufacturers across all industries need to recognize the new realities of innovation,” commented Scott Hopkins, general manager, IBM PLM Solutions. “IBM is committed to work with leading schools such as Purdue on advanced research projects that can provide real-world experience to our young inventors before graduation; these programs are crucial in accelerating innovation and keeping American manufacturers competitive.”

“The partnership with IBM and Purdue represents the collaboration of three leaders in their respective domains,” said Joel Lemke, CEO of ENOVIA and a Purdue alumnus. “The next generation of PLM solutions will be centered on innovation and will require future leaders to understand the significant changes in the enterprise in order to achieve a high level of innovation. Together, we will move to the next phases of our vision for the digital enterprise. The concept of PLM promises to reduce time to market for new products. The Internet-based technology allows industry to share R&D information with its partners and enables people to collaborate regardless of their physical location.”