Ruecker AG chooses ENOVIA from Dassault Systemes and IBM

e-business solution for engineering will reduce product development time significantly

Wiesbaden (Germany) and Paris (France), March 22, 2000--Ruecker AG, IBM* and Dassault Systemes (NASDAQ:DASTY) announced today that Ruecker has selected ENOVIAVPM** as its e-business solution for engineering. The agreement includes the purchase of 110 ENOVIAVPM licenses, ENOVIA Portal, and IBM training, consulting and services. Ruecker will use ENOVIAVPM to manage the thousands of designs and assemblies it develops each year for its customers in the automotive industry.

ENOVIAVPM and ENOVIA Portal are part of the ENOVIA Portfolio**, a set of solutions that helps manufacturers gain competitive leadership by allowing them to manage electronically all aspects of the product life cycle. IBM’s Engineering Solutions business unit and IBM Business Partners worldwide sell, market and support ENOVIA Solutions.

Working closely with major leading automobile manufacturers around the world, Ruecker provides engineering services to design and develop new vehicles and related technologies.

"Ruecker is a key development partner for the entire life cycle of a product," explained Josef Fraile, Ruecker’s worldwide manager of digital enterprise applications. "We selected ENOVIAVPM for the distinct advantages it gives us in this role-including easy integration with our existing 400 CATIA seats, IBM RS6000 workstations and DB2 database, and faster data transfer. This will help us work at least 30 percent more efficiently for our customers, which translates into real time- and cost-savings for us and for them."

Initially, Ruecker will implement ENOVIAVPM in its facilities in Germany to manage the body design of a new luxury car. This large project encompasses the thousands of parts, created in CATIA, the leading CAD/CAM/CAE system from IBM and Dassault Systemes, and linked digitally via ENOVIAVPM. Future projects will include the linking all of Ruecker’s offices worldwide via ENOVIA Portal. This will enable Ruecker to develop an e-business solution for the export of data directly to customer databases, to share internal information more easily, and to create a fully-integrated, collaborative product development environment throughout the company.

Scott Hopkins, vice president digital enterprise sales, IBM Engineering Solutions, commented, "IBM is pleased that Ruecker has made the strategic decision to implement ENOVIAVPM. We are confident that, by transforming product information into business intelligence, Ruecker will help improve their customers’ competitive positions."

"We are proud to welcome Ruecker AG into the fast-growing family of ENOVIAVPM users," said Joel Lemke, CEO ENOVIA Corporation, "and look forward to helping them accelerate the introduction of new products, enhance innovation, and reduce development costs."