Activities associated with altitude such as mountain climbing, mountaineering and work in suspension require strong and secure equipments providing a high level of security and allowing people to do it under the best conditions. Climbing is a difficult activity that requires a lot of efforts. In order to optimize those efforts workers need to get the best equipment from the shoes to the carabiner.

PETZL's mission has been the same for 30 years now: to invent concrete solutions enabling people to go higher with less risk, day and night. PETZL had a new project consisting in reducing carabiners' weight by 25% while maintaining their mechanical properties and performance above the required standards. And, of course, controlling manufacturing costs as well.

DPS' solution
Considering those facts, French PLM company DPS used an approach of integration of analysis in the product design that is currently widespread in the automotive and aeronautics industries. According to Raphaël Lanez, manager of the project, this was the key to the project.
DPS staff also listened actively in order to meet PETZL's needs. The project proposals made by DPS provided critical insight and enabled them to anticipate their needs, to offer a new, non-intuitive geometry. They also resulted in the development of digital methods to optimize component weight.

One step further
In addition to reducing the weight of the carabiner by 25%, DPS enabled PETZL to save time by significantly lowering the number of CAD calculation iterations. PETZL even succeeded in obtaining a significant decrease in the number of prototypes and tests. These benefits led to a reduction in product development time, representing 3 to 4 working months, or 15% time savings gained for the project overall.

Following this very successful collaboration, PETZL wishes to apply these optimization and integration methods to the design of other products for the brand.

Read the full DPS / PETZL success story.

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