Dear technology enthusiasts,
This Monday and Tuesday (September 28th-29th) is being held in Chicago the 2nd Composites World Expo.
Dassault Systemes is of course well represented, with a booth and several speaking slots. 
One of them, on Tuesday September 29th, is shared with the DS partner Intercim around the theme of Manufacturing Excellence for Composites.
We thought it would be interesting to look at what Intercim offers for Composite Manufacturers through a customer case.

In the wake of the all-new Boeing 787, the first airliner predominantly built from carbon composites, the entire industry is seeing a major shift of the demand.

To put things in perspective, let’s look at the market dynamics. The Industry is gradually transitioning from experimental and low volume productions to massive amounts .
The amount of carbon fibers consumed by the Industry is expected to double over the next 6 years. Are the manufacturers ready for that “bungee” jump?

Reducing costs of composite manufacturing processes while coping with production ramp-ups now becomes strategic. Let’s look at the case of EADS Composites Atlantic, and how difficult it can be to ramp up a composite production.

Wonder what it feels like not being able to deliver when the customer asks for more?

“In the fall of 2006, five years into a major contract for the biweekly delivery of ten types of products (leading edges, rudders...) to be used on aircraft manufacturing, we had slipped dangerously behind schedule in manufacturing and deliveries, up to 6 months late on one product in particular,” recalls Séverine Guitton, Head of Quality & Methods for Composites Atlantic Limited (CAL).
On the most heavily affected leading edge products, the scrap rate had reached 13% and rework hit 28%! However, there was absolutely no logic that could explain this highly irregular defect. All of the manufacturing parameters, constantly checked and rechecked, fit perfectly with the plans.

Once the INTERCIM solution for Composite Manufacturing (Pertinence Suite) was in place, workers began collecting 96 parameters at various stages of the  production process, for each new part that was manufactured. The “Rule Discovery” module from INTERCIM, a patented technology, quickly identified two totally unrelated and until then unsuspected characteristics as directly influencing the recurrent defects. “Rules Discovery enabled us to clearly establish specific rules regarding key parameters, far from any known scientific explanation and most strikingly in total contradiction to all of our intuitions,” underlines Séverine Guitton. Then the workers receive conditional notifications in real time during the execution with the INTERCIM Operations Advisor module, live on the shop floor. “By applying these rules to our normal operating procedures, we immediately reduced the scrap rate from 13% to zero and rework came down from 28% to less than 1%,” she continues.

Want to find out more on INTERCIM’s capabilities for Composite Manufacturers? Please visit www.intercim.com.

Does the Composites Atlantic example inspire you?
And what if that could apply to other industries as well?

Romain Lavault for Intercim and Jacques

How to implement successfully a green manufacturing

Nowadays, it seems like “Going Green” and efficient manufacturing have become synonymous with one another.   It makes perfect sense for this to be true though, since one of the primary goals for any manufacturer and also any environmentalist is minimizing waste and saving energy.  Some will say that going “green” is just what companies should do because it is better for the world we live in or because we only have one planet.  Without argument, both statements are entirely true; however, successfully implementing green manufacturing practices requires a business case.  Kate Bourdet of the 3D Perspectives Blog notes, “The European Union estimates that more than 80 percent of a product’s environmental impact is determined in the product conception phase.”   So then the question is, wouldn’t it make sense – as a business case – to build an optimized operation that not only achieves all manufacturing goals but also employs green practices in doing so?

A common vision ...

Magestic Systems, Inc (MSI) and Dassault Systèmes (DS) have made this a possibility.  Both companies operate with the understanding that for “green” manufacturing to succeed, industrial development needs to continue to progress and simultaneously needs to avoid foreclosing the needs of future generations.  This relies on planning and the ability of designers, engineers, and manufacturers alike to take into account all costs of a product, both intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic to a product are costs that go into buying material, operating a machine; extrinsic to this product, however, are costs such as where a shop purchases its energy – from coal-fired or renewable sources.  Choices made in the planning of a product lifecycle can greatly minimize its impact on the environment. 

... that result in solutions ready for the market

DS has built suites of software applications from CATIA, to SIMULIA, to ENOVIA that all advocate advanced planning and enable manufacturers to produce quality products without much trial and error, if any. PLM applications, like the DS suites, encompass the macro side of manufacturing, the plan.  Partners like MSI focus on the micro side, creating technologies that fit into plans set forth through PLM to create an optimized system.  TruNEST™ CAA V5 Composites Based offers advanced true shape nesting with best in class algorithmic logic to minimize toxic waste created during the cutting of composite materials.  TruNEST™ also allows manufacturers to optimize their use of energy by reducing cycle times, programming optimal tool paths, and maximizing throughput – all of which saves manufacturers money. MSI has advanced that technology with TruLASER™ View CAA V5 Composites Based by enabling operators to lay up plies with minimal wasted effort.  CATIA V5 design data provides measurements and designates where and how plies should be laid up as well as how the plies should be kitted to even further streamline the process.

Are you ready for the transformation?

TruNEST™ CAA V5 Composites Based and TruLASER™ View CAA V5 Composites Based comprise one piece of the DS PLM solution that not only makes sense as a business case, but also on an environmental level.  Together, the technologies highlight the teachings and blog posts of Dr. David Dornfeld of University of California-Berkeley and the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Sustainability.  He says, “reduced cost of ownership (CoO) is still the mantra in most industries…Time is money...energy is money...consumables are money.  If you can make the same product using fewer resources/energy [then] that seems like a good strategy.”   (see entire post) Dornfeld directly correlates efficient manufacturing and reduced cost of ownership with “green” manufacturing practices.  These principles of minimizing waste and optimizing energy provide the foundation for DS and MSI technologies.  Through PLM, Dassault and Magestic Systems continue raise the bar for the entire manufacturing landscape.  By investing in development for tomorrow, the two companies together look to discover new best practices for today.

What about you? Is your Company going in that direction? Do you agree that these are profund reasons or do you consider them as pure hype? Please leave a comment!

Dylan MacLean for Magestic Systems and Jacques

Hi everyone,
As Anthony is gone on Holidays, discovering new landscape and having some deserved rest, I will take over his blog contribution and try to tell you nice stories with our partners.  And we have some interesting things to tell you.

Speed and strength, what's under the hood?!
Daydreaming can allow us to ponder the many wonders of the world. Spending passing moments contemplating how a passenger ferry can travel at such high speeds for such sustained periods of time for example or perhaps how a yacht can be so fast, yet so agile?
Without great engine systems, neither of these things would be possible and without MTU, one of the world's leading manufacturers of off-road diesel engines many rail, road, agricultural or military vehicles and machines would not exist in the capacity that they do today.

Image courtesy of MTU Detroit Diesel

Something is new with MTU!
With the current global economic crisis biting hard, companies are being forced to save money, slash budgets and reduce man-hours, but workloads remain unchanged.  MTU realized that they would have to speculate to accumulate and to save time and money invested in an installation of TPM, Theorem Process Manager, helping them solve the CAD interoperability challenges they faced.
The installation of TPM has enabled MTU to save time through automating MTU’s complex and labour intensive CAD data exchange processes where CATIA and or Pro/E data had to be prepared and dispatched for a variety of customers – each with differing requirements.

TPM enabled MTU to significantly reduce turnaround times and save them around 60% in man-hours on CAD interoperability tasks.
Discover how TPM can work for you. Read the full MTU story. 

Alexandre and Kevin Levy for the Theorem team.

How DS Alliance partners adopted our Community blog

Just 5 months ago, we made this community blog become available to all customers and partners. Many things happened since then, and we have seen an enthousiastic partner community welcoming this announcement during our last Partner Summit.

This is quite an innovative approach, since this blog content is created collaboratively by our partner community (software, service, hardware partners). It gives each partner the opportunity to talk to a large community of users in one place. Under the PLM MarketPLace umbrella, our customer community is now able to find and share information about all complementary solutions adding value to DS offers.
Even more interesting for all: the attitude of our partner community. We have there plenty of technical, consulting and sales people, people loving to HEAR and LEARN from customers.

How you will benefit from this momentum

We have people willing to listen, share and talk. What are we going to talk about in the PLM field? Just what our customer and partner tell us!

So, what would be the most interesting and valuable blogpost to read in your mind? Please tell us what you think by answering this poll, or leave us a comment below.  

the PLM MarketPlace blog is yours!!
Keep connected,

Jacques

When talking with moto bikers, some of them tell they love their vehicle more than their wives! And at the end of the discussion, you imagine how desperate these women can be… (sounds a little bit cliché, doesn’t it? Bikers always take good care of their bike, making its maintenance always on time, polishing it and removing every single dead mosquito on the lights. But above all, they want their motorbike to be unique. And here comes the difficulty for parts manufacturers!

Zeel Design is one of them. The firm works on engineering, consulting and manufacturing of specialized parts and vehicles. They received a request from a customer wanting to enlarge the rear wheel of his Harley-Davidson. The challenge was to redesign some existing key-parts of the bike as accurately as possible but also as fast as possible.

The solution came thanks to Creaform. Creaform has developed the Handyscan 3D line of products. These revolutionizing self-positioning handheld 3D laser scanners provide very high accuracy files that can be exported to most CAD platforms and inspection and animation software. Due to its true portability, versatility and accuracy, the Handyscan 3D line of products makes 3D scanning more simple than ever.

Discover now how, by using the EXAscan, Zeel Design managed to reduce by 70-90% the time spent previously on CAD drawings and reverse engineering process. Results, both in terms of time saving and accuracy are astonishing!

In the end, whether you like it bigger or smaller, Creaform’s scanners can help you to make it in less time!

Summer time is always a good period to explore new areas and discover new things. This is true for the place you’ll visit this year, the new people you’ll meet but also for new areas on the Web. If, like me, you can’t really disconnect from work even during holidays (), remember to have a look to the different PLM MarketPlace channels all over the Web.

If you’re the lucky owner of a smartphone, remember to bookmark the mobile version of PLM MarketPlace to receive our Partners’ latest news right on your phone by the swimmingpool! You can also bookmark our RSS feed.

To keep aware of the latest business discussions around PLM MarketPlace’s referenced solutions, join, read and react on the PLM MarketPlace LinkedIn group. Have also a look at the members list to find new business contacts. By the way, we are close to reach our 1000th member, you maybe?

If you really can’t disconnect from work and your smartphone/laptop and want to chat with other PLM users/professionals/experts/partners, then PLM MarketPlace Twitter is made for you! Like LinkedIn, it is totally free. Just sign up and start discussing in less than 140 characters (it’s not always easy but an interesting exercise that definitely shows you how much a 3D drawing helps you to express an idea ).

Finally, after dinner and a walk by the marina, you might want to see a great TV show. What about the PLM MarketPlace TV shows introducing the program’s latest improvements and benefits? These are really great and made on TVnima! We would be very proud to count you among our audience!

Well… I hope everybody will find here the content he/she is looking for! Time for me to wish you a good holiday time and see you back in September with new and exciting announcements on PLM MarketPlace!

Anthony Rosendo