Volkswagen AG Deploys Dassault Systèmes’ DELMIA Process Engineer Throughout the Enterprise

Auburn Hills, Michigan, USA and Fellbach, Germany, March 7, 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 Volkswagen AG will implement DELMIA Process Engineer (DPE) software throughout its organization.  On the basis of a group-wide agreement, DPE will be employed in all production sites for strategic assembly planning for the Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda and Seat brands. This will lead to improved planning reliability, shorter planning times, and a reduction of development costs. 

“After initial testing and positive evaluation of the performance value of DPE at Audi, the solution will now be available for other members of the VW group and the licenses of the different brands will all be consolidated. This is an important step for complete integration of our enterprise, involving more than 500 users,” says Volker Germann, Volkswagen Head of Planning.  “Thanks to years of close and successful cooperation between Volkswagen, Audi and DS in the field of automotive assembly, DELMIA now fully supports our planning processes,” explains Arne Lakeit, Audi Head of Planning. “We now work with the same tools and methodology in all assembly departments of the group,” explains Gerhard Voges, Skoda Head of Planning. “Just nine months since implementation of DPE at Skoda and we have already seen the benefits. The Seat brand is also introducing DPE throughout the company and use it for future projects.” 

“We are committed to enabling lean manufacturing processes in the automotive community and this deployment within the Volkswagen group demonstrates the value of our digital manufacturing solutions,” states Philippe Charlès, Dassault Systèmes , CEO of DELMIA. “After several years of successful partnership with Audi, we are delighted to be working with all entities of the Volkswagen group on the implementation of DELMIA to further enhance the manufacturing efficiencies.”  

Process engineer is a key element of the 3D Product Lifecycle Management solution of DELMIA. This software, for comprehensive manufacturing process planning and target costing in simultaneous engineering, ensures high-level planning reliability along with optimized planning and implementation times and costs. It paves the way for an early and reliable overview by showing the production time and investment costs, production space and the amount of manpower required so that the time from product design to the production phase is considerably shortened. The object-centric Product-Process-Resource (PPR)-Hub database, on which this solution is based, allows for redundancy-free data management, which ensures consistency of planning information in all detailing stages. As a result, DPE leads to more planning reliability, shorter planning times and a reduction of development costs.