Thales Alenia Space Improves Global Engineering Efficiency with Dassault Systèmes’ PLM solutions

European leader in satellite systems reaches new levels in collaborative engineering, while increasing quality and reducing costs

LE BOURGET (Paris Air Show), France – June 24, 2011 — Dassault Systèmes (Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, announced today that Thales Alenia Space, the leading European designer and manufacturer of satellites for telecommunications, defense, navigation and Earth observation, has successfully deployed its PLM solutions to support key mechanical design processes of its space programs. Thales Alenia Space has unified its mechanical engineering processes by standardizing its disparate and heterogeneous solutions around CATIA and ENOVIA, as a single environment to improve real-time collaborative engineering. As a first step in this transformation, Thales Alenia Space has deployed ENOVIA, CATIA, 3DLive and 3DVIA Composer within its different sites in France and in Italy. Future phases will include sites in Spain and Belgium, as well as partners’ sites around the world.

Thales Alenia Space chose Dassault Systèmes’ PLM solutions to reduce overall development time and improve global engineering efficiency, by rationalizing its tools and improving the quality of its processes throughout the product lifecycle, from engineering to manufacturing. Partners and suppliers communities can access the company’s PLM platform to enable real-time collaboration. Relying on a unique 3D digital mockup, all users in the extended enterprise, engineers and non-engineers alike, are able to access the most up-to-date data in an open yet secure environment.

“Enabling collaboration between our employees and partners at all levels of the engineering process will open up new possibilities for innovation and excellence that we are confident we will be able to achieve with the Dassault Systèmes solutions,” said Michel Fiat, Vice President Operations, Thales Alenia Space.

Thanks to its experience with some of the industry’s key players and working with Keonys, the leading distributor and integrator of Dassault Systèmes PLM solutions in Europe, Dassault Systèmes developed role-related functionalities linked to satellite design, to meet Thales Alenia Space’s specific requirements. By leveraging dedicated solutions, Thales Alenia Space holds a competitive advantage on the market to develop business in new areas and to further progress where the company is already offering its customers state of the art levels of quality.

“Working in close cooperation with our partner Keonys, we have been able to provide Thales Alenia Space with a new collaborative platform that gives them a greater level of performance and efficiency within the satellite marketplace. This platform will offer significant efficiency and design quality improvements by enabling close multi-site collaboration with industrial partners and subcontractors early in the design phase and throughout the product development life cycle. Close integration of engineering data within the manufacturing process of this highly complex product, right down to the shop floor will also streamline operations,” said Patrick Fardeau, Vice President, EMEA, Aerospace & Defense, Dassault Systèmes.