Automotive Supplier TMS Chooses Dassault Systèmes’ DELMIA Body-in-White Solution

Single Data Source for All Assembly Processes Saves Time and Money

Auburn Hills, Mich., USA and Fellbach,Germany, April 8, 2008 -- Dassault Systèmes (DS) (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, has announced that TMS Transport- und Montagesysteme GmbH, part of the Valiant Group of companies headquartered in Canada and an international supplier of automotive assembly systems, material handling and industrial cleaning technologies, has chosen the comprehensive DELMIA Body-in-White automotive solution to plan its assembly processes.

“Our customers expect the quality of our planning and implementation in the body-in-white division to improve constantly,” said Franz Bachmayr, head of IT Management at TMS. “At the same time they want faster turnaround times and a reasonable price. It isn’t about doing everything just a little bit better, but rather thoroughly optimizing the entire planning and manufacturing process.”

Dassault Systèmes’ universal and integrated technology offers a number of advantages here: With just one software application—the DELMIA Body-in-White scaleable solution—
users can plan joint sequences, design layouts, perform robot simulations, calculate cycle times, and manage off-line programming all prior to production on the plant floor. This uniform continuity and virtual process verification saves money and time.

“We often begin the body-in-white planning even though we know full well that 80 percent of the components will be altered during the project,” explained Harald Ecker, manager of simulation and offline programming at TMS. “While we are planning the production facilities, the car manufacturer is still working out the final details. Product development and production planning are performed in tandem. Simultaneous engineering isn’t just an empty cliché around here—it’s a fact of daily life.”

The key is maintaining an overview of the entire system. Intelligent planning is crucial so that individual planners know exactly what they need to do. All data is integrated into a single DELMIA manufacturing hub repository. This process saves every change to the database and is made available to all process participants, both internally and externally. This capability allows users to leverage best practices by creating standard modules based upon proven resources, proven processes, capacity, and cost from previous projects.

With the DELMIA Body-in-White solution, automotive manufacturers and suppliers have the technical ability to merge different plan segments into their systems at any given time. These partial segments can then be integrated into one complete process later on.

“The next step is to integrate all the diverse options into our daily workflows. This starts with software installation, training, and deployment.