Ford Designates CATIA V5 as Global Design and Engineering Standard for All New Vehicle Development

Reinforces Commitment to IBM and Dassault Systèmes’ PLM Solutions for New Product Development

Paris, July 27, 2006 –  IBM and Dassault Systèmes (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), world leaders in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), today announced that Ford Motor Company has extended its multi-year contract, which designates CATIA V5 as the global design and engineering standard for all new vehicle and powertrain systems development.  A component of the CATIA V5 solution at Ford is the Engineering Hub, which provides a native V5 environment for sophisticated access and management of CATIA V5 within Ford’s C3P NG platform.  This C3P NG solution is used for new product development across the Ford extended enterprise and within Ford affiliated companies. This helps Ford, at a global level, to continue streamlining digital product development processes - fostering both innovation and competitiveness - and accelerating time-to-market. 

C3P NG is Ford’s product development platform, which delivers the next level of digital product capabilities to all brand partners in Ford Motor Company, effectively conducting enterprise-wide vehicle and technology product creation.

CATIA V5’s ability to quickly adapt a design for other vehicles on the same platform is critical to making gains in an overall corporate product development process, and is directly contributing to Ford’s goal of reducing product development costs and increasing product quality.  Used by Ford since 2003, CATIA V5 was first implemented on the Body-in-White development of the new Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan, and Lincoln Zephyr vehicles, helping Ford reduce its overall digital development time.   Use of CATIA V5 has expanded into other vehicle programs and functional domains, including chassis, electrical and interior. 

John Porter, vice-president, Product Lifecycle Management, IBM Americas, commented: “This PLM agreement expands and strengthens the existing relationship between IBM and Ford Motor Company, and outlines IBM's commitment in enabling Ford to design best-in-class vehicles.  Ford’s decision to expand their relationship with us is proof positive that they view our PLM solutions as key to their innovation and business growth. This further strengthens our position in the automotive industry.”

“Dassault Systèmes CATIA V5 PLM is all about fueling innovation.  Ford’s focus is on quality, innovation and competitiveness and Dassault Systemes’ solutions are helping meet that challenge,” said Joel Lemke, CEO of Dassault Systèmes’ ENOVIA brand and the company’s global Ford executive.  “CATIA V5 is delivering higher quality design information earlier in the Ford vehicle development process than ever before.“

“The Engineering Hub manages ’engineering-owned’ intellectual property gathered during the product life cycle, and provides a consistent information infrastructure, supporting the complex web of inter-relationships that relate individual data components,“ continued Lemke.

Leveraging CATIA V5, developed by Dassault Systèmes and a core foundation of the IBM portfolio of PLM solutions, enables a top-down, functional approach to geometric modeling, preserving product & process associativity and integration. Within the context of the associative design process, CATIA V5 yields a significant reduction in geometric modeling time, while delivering greater design fidelity and completeness earlier in the product development process.