Unipoint Electric Streamlines Product Development Processes with PLM Solutions from IBM and Dassault Systèmes

Taiwan’s leading supplier for the automotive aftermarket shortens product development time three-fold with CATIA V5 and SMARTEAM

Taipei, Taiwan, and Paris, France – May 18, 2004 – IBM and Dassault Systèmes (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) today announced that Unipoint Electric Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (Unipoint) has shortened its product development process by more than 60 % since implementing their Product Lifecycle Management solutions in 2002. Unipoint and its suppliers have increased use of standard parts and reduced design errors, thus improving overall production efficiency.

A leading player in the automotive aftermarket for new starter motors, alternators, air-conditioning parts and wiper blades, Unipoint has customers in over 75 countries. To increase sales while respecting customer demand for quality and fast delivery, Unipoint implemented IBM PLM Solutions with CATIA V5 for virtual product development and SMARTEAM for collaborative product data and lifecycle management, developed by Dassault Systèmes, to match the company’s goals for a long-term development strategy while preserving its core research and development activities.

“Providing high quality products to our customers, reducing product costs by 20%, and taking up to 20% market share in the global automotive aftermarket before 2010 are the key goals at Unipoint,” said Mr. Hsu Kwang-Yang, general manager, Unipoint Electric Manufacturing. “PLM technology from IBM and Dassault Systèmes is helping us to achieve these objectives. With the power of CATIA and SMARTEAM, we exchange information with our suppliers immediately, and this is the most effective way to streamline our product development. Since the implementation of IBM PLM Solutions, we have reduced product development time of auto parts by two-thirds and strengthened our market position.”

CATIA V5’s knowledgeware has enabled Unipoint to create standard parts, contributing to the substantial improvement in productivity. For example, a gear and spring is different for every car model. With knowledgeware, Unipoint engineers need only change a parameter and CATIA automatically creates the part. Additionally, the part created with CATIA will be correct, needing no rework or modification.

Seamlessly integrated with CATIA V5, SMARTEAM has also boosted Unipoint’s productivity. The web-based product data and lifecycle management application enables Unipoint to collaborate between the different company sites and with suppliers to share, view, and manage all product data, making retrieval of information relating to the thousands of parts references easily accessible and always up to date.

“In less than two years, Unipoint has achieved a significant return on investment that helps them win new business,” said Raoul Van Engelshoven, vice president, IBM PLM, Asia Pacific. “Taiwanese manufacturers, including Unipoint, face many issues including global competition, required cost reduction, increasingly diversified customer demands, and shortened product development time. IBM PLM Solutions backed by IBM industry-specific consulting services allow customers to address these challenges as well as develop innovative, competitive products. We look forward to serving more customers in Taiwan with scaleable PLM solutions that will help them realize the benefits of PLM.”

”The auto parts aftermarket is a highly competitive sector and manufacturers such as Unipoint have to focus on innovation in the design and manufacture of new products,” said Christian Nardin, Managing Director, Dassault Systèmes Asia. “Dassault Systèmes PLM technology and DS PLM Best Practices for the automotive industry help companies of all sizes to cut costs and development time in order to focus on innovation. In addition, our PLM solutions share the common V5 open architecture, which ensures full integration throughout product lifecycle and facilitates the development of applications specifically adapted to a broad variety of business environments.”

Unipoint’s product development platform runs on running on IBM Intellistation M-Pro hardware.