Valeo Selects Dassault Systèmes’ DELMIA for Manufacturing Processes Improvement

Goal Set: Optimize Production Lines for Auto Components Supplier

Paris, France, and Auburn Hills, MI., USA, October 8, 2007   Dassault Systèmes (DS) (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, today announced that DELMIA’s digital manufacturing solutions were selected for a joint project by Valeo, a world leader of components, integrated systems and modules for cars and trucks.  Valeo is the first ever to contribute its know-how in wiring harness manufacturing process to DELMIA’s software after a pilot project, extending its PLM deployment to manufacturing processes optimization.

The solution developed by DELMIA, through a close partnership with Valeo, has been tested in Valeo’s industrial environment and demonstrated its capability to improve its processes. The implementation of the solution at Valeo VCS’s (Valeo Connective Systems) pilot site for a key process demonstrated a substantial improvement over its current optimization methods, justifying a generalized deployment of the solution at all Valeo VCS production sites. DELMIA extends to digital manufacturing the parts of Dassault Systèmes’ portfolio already in Valeo’s PLM strategy, which comprises CATIA for design and ENOVIA MatrixOne for enterprise PLM.

“After demonstrating the value of our solutions for leading car manufacturers, we are confident that they are equally useful for their suppliers. That is why we are working in close cooperation with Valeo, a world leader in its field,” says Yves COZE, vice president europe, DELMIA, Dassault Systèmes. “We are very satisfied with the results, which confirm the added value of DELMIA for automotive components suppliers as well as our capacity to help them for their industrial performance improvement initiatives. This success confirms the flexibility of our solution and its ability to adapt to structures implementing Lean Manufacturing.”

The Digital Manufacturing solution will be deployed by all the manufacturing sites of Valeo’s Connective Systems’ divisions in charge of development and production of electrical harnesses for cars. Electrical Harnesses represent a considerable part of the total cost of a car. Any improvement leading to increased quality and lower production costs is considered strategic by OEMs and their suppliers. This Digital Manufacturing solution supports a unified manufacturing process across all sites. This provides a consistent method for planning and pricing, managing change and diversity, which creates recommendations for production line organizations based on production forecast or production mix variability. It also generates validated work instructions for each station on the production line.

DELMIA, the digital manufacturing brand of Dassault Systèmes PLM offering, allows manufacturing organizations to define, simulate, validate, optimize, and capitalize their manufacturing processes in a collaborative environment. The solution is built on a database providing a unified hub for Product, Process and Resource data, and offers powerful applicative modules to address all aspects of manufacturing, including time studies, means definition and simulation (manual or robotized production cells), flow optimization, work instructions production or line balancing.

Announcing the 2007 Worldwide DELMIA Customer Conferences.  North America, October 3-4, Europe, October 16-17, Asia-Pacific, November 7-8. For more information and location details, visit out conference website at www.delmia-cc.com