Hello all!

First day at ECF 2009 was very exciting with some great testimonies of customers and Bernard Charlès who shared his vision for 2010 and the coming years. I invite you to have a look at our fellows from 3D Perspectives to know more about this first day.

On our side, we had the opportunity to meet several of our PLM MarketPlace partners. All of them came here with the intent of presenting their value to customers. They've all got some great stuff to show and share with the attendees!

I'm glad to take you for a "virtual tour” of our partners' booths and share this ECF 09 with you!

View of the Agora from the PLM MarketPlace booth

We first met with Joel from CD-adapco who told us that his company aimed at making things easy for everyone to leverage knowledge with simulation. Did you have a look at their product STAR-CAT5 that allows you to simulate flow and thermal stress integrated in CATIA.

Our English folks from Theorem Solutions have products that improve the ability for collaboration and communication in an extended enterprise since complex products are not designed by a single company. Keith told us also that Theorem solutions are made to make design engineering processes more efficient and effective for good ROI and deployment of technology.

Next, we met François who is an Application Engineer at IGE+XAO, a French company with products helping you with electrical solutions in the PLM space. With See Electrical Harness people can schematize all cable and electrical solutions in products which need electricity (e.g. lighting in an aeroplane cabin or the radio in a car).

Our daily tour ends with Transcat from Germany. Martin told us that they define their software as an investment in new solutions, into your future. Q-Checker for V6 and Q-PLM for ENOVIA V6 help customers to accelerate process in global developments processes with quality and compliance controls.

See you there again tomorrow to discover the second half of our PLM MarketPlace partners present here. I also invite you to post comments and questions below so that we can share them and bring you answers as quickly as possible.

Finally, don't forget to follow the event on Twitter as I explained yesterday, there's a lot of "Tweeples" around with their smartphones bringing the ECF 09 live to you!

Right... Time for us to get offline for a few hours. See you there tomorrow!

Anthony Rosendo, on behalf of the PLM MarketPlace Team

Here we are, just arrived at DisneyLand Paris for the Dassault Systèmes European Customer Forum 2009, aka ECF09! While the first attendees are checking in at their hotel, there is a lot of movement in the Agora!

I came today with Michael to install our booth which stand between two of our PLM MarketPlace partners: Optis and Prostep (thanks Manfred for the tools by the way! ).

Michael fighting against a plastic roll

We feel that all our Partners are very excited to welcome you tomorrow and are currently doing their utmost to offer you the best booth of the Agora! I can tell you that you're going to see some amazing and great stuff in the coming two days!

I know that some of you can't attend the ECF this year. Don't worry: we set up two great online channels where you'll be able to follow us mostly live: the PLM MarketPlace blog (so bookmark us right know if not already done ) and some Twitter accounts: @plmmarketplace (us!) @michael_moser @bdelahaye @3DPerspectives @jon_dutton @nmaritan and @DSCustomersLIVE.

Be our guest!

Well, time for your PLM MarketPlace team to get some food and some sleep (humm... I can ear children screaming next to my room, bad news for me...) in order to be up and running to welcome you tomorrow!

See you at Mickey's then!

Anthony Rosendo

The challenging economic climate of the last year means that it is very important to have an accurate uptodate view of market opportunity. Theorem Solutions has recently completed an in depth study on CAD data exchange in the UK West Midlands Automotive supply chain which has revealed CATIA’s leading position in UK automotive design and manufacturing companies.

The objective of the study was to identify the types and scale of challenges experienced in CAD data exchange amongst the UK West Midlands Automotive Suppliers. This detail is important to Theorem in order to ensure the development and supply of the ideal interoperability technology to meet the current and anticipated future needs of this important industry sector.

Whilst the core objectives of the project were to identify CAD data exchange problems the work revealed a great deal of further information, including the mix of CAD systems in place. In this respect the project discovered that CATIA dominates the UK West Midlands automotive supply chain with more than twice the number of installations as the next nearest CAD system. When the number of installed workstations is considered the CATIA dominance is seen to be even greater.

The market research confirmed that data exchange is still a problem for many companies in the automotive sector. CATIA emerges as the most widely used CAD system in the survey and this reinforces Theorem’s commitment to providing CATIA users with ‘best in class’ interoperability solutions.

Do these findings match your experience of automotive supply chains?
Do you have problems with data exchange?

The Theorem Team

What if PLM was as easy as watching a video on YouTube?
People's habits are changing. When they want to find an answer to a question they just log on internet and try to find the right answer. And as it is well said, a picture is as good as 1000 words. That's what people are looking for when they make a search on YouTube; they are trying to find a valuable content. People are looking to content that will provide, fun, tips, facts, tutorials, etc. they don't want another TV ad.
And that's precisely the thing that our partner can provide to their user community. Nice and valuable content that will bring them useful information about their products, tips on how to use it, demo of what the product can do.

One minute of video worth dozens of slides
There are thousands of videos on YouTube. You can find all and everything on it and interact with the authors. But the thing is that sometimes it's hard to find the right content and not all those videos are useful or with high rated interest.
When it comes to put our content on such websites, there is always the fear of not to being fund. Or maybe people are going to find part of our message and it could bring to a misunderstanding. So that's why we've created a PLM MarketPlace channel in order to group all of the content in one single place. 

YouTube is not just for kids! Broadcast your business!
This social media thing is not always easy to understand. What is the value of putting my content on YouTube for example?  Of course it's a great way to get more visibility, but it's also a great way to spread useful information about partner's products and their utilization. 

• End-users aren't lost anymore. There is no need to spend hours in searching for the right videos. They can have a quick and interactive demonstration.
• This way, solution providers can explain what their products can do and how to use it. It's an overview of the product that allows people to understand the real value of solutions.
• Resellers can take a look at products demonstration and understand quickly what they're doing and which value they can give to customers. Also, by putting together those videos in one single place it allows users and resellers to find every solution demonstrations.
  

But the important thing everybody has to keep in mind is "valuable content"! The videos your putting on YouTube has to be useful, interesting, allowing people to interact with you and spread the information.
A video without any sound and/or any text with a low quality, will bring frustration, misunderstanding or people are going to switch to another video because you didn't catch their attention. Those media has to be carefully made, providing the best information in the easiest way to understand it.

Personnally, I found videos made by Creaform, Geometric and Theorem inspiring just because there is a voice explaning the meaning of what you see. What about you, what are your favorites?

Alexandre

After 28 years of successful collaboration, IBM has agreed to fully integrate its PLM Sales Operations to Dassault Systèmes. This is a major step in the history of both companies and will benefit our entire PLM Ecosystem.

In the coming months, 700 employees present in 32 countries will be joining DS teams, bringing their deep industry sales expertise and excellent customer relationships. Consequently, this new alliance will deliver more value than ever to our customers present in 11 industries.

View Bernard Charlès, Dassault Systèmes president and CEO, announcement by clicking on the picture above
We also invite you to have a look at the official press release and communication on 3DPerspectives.

Customers at the heart of the new DS-IBM collaboration

This acquisition will lead to the full integration of 700 highly qualified Sales People bringing their strong knowledge in terms of industrial needs, customers’ strategy and PLM projects. Obviously, they know perfectly the DS portfolio but they have a very good knowledge of our Software, Technology and Services Partners’ solutions.

New opportunities for PLM MarketPlace Solution Providers

What does this announcement mean for the PLM Marketplace? Through this acquisition, PLM Marketplace referenced solution providers will gain exposure within Dassault Systèmes’ expanded sales teams and with large customer accounts.

As announced by Bernard Charles, "We are reaching a new level of customer engagement built on commitment, multi-industry knowledge and high-value solutions for sustainable innovation. Looking forward, the wide adoption of 3D lifelike experience and PLM will require the combination of direct sales, our network of partners and online communities.".

At PLM MarketPlace we welcome this new paradigm!
Stay tuned on this blog to know more about what’s coming…

DS is growing, so will the PLM MarketPlace portfolio available for resellers.

Our Solution Providers know what the new DS-IBM relationship means in terms of business opportunities. The PLM MarketPlace portfolio is expected to grow significantly in the near future. With our 100 Value Added Channel Partners located across the globe, PLM Marketplace gives Dassault Systèmes’ new Direct Sales Force and Value Added Channel Partners a fantastic opportunity to meet all of their customers’ expectations.

Onward PLM MarketPlace Solution Providers to help them face their new challenges!

> Are you as excited as we are? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section!

The PLM MarketPlace Team

When you go for a ride or try a vehicle at a car dealer’s before buying a brand new one, one of the most important parameter is the comfort provided by the seats. There is no more direct contact between people and the machine excepted through the seats. It is also the second thing you can appreciate (or not) after the look of the car. This is why car and car-seats manufacturer must do their utmost to provide the future driver and passengers with the best user experience.

Faurecia needs it, LMS provides it!

Faurecia is Europe leading automotive seating system manufacturer and one of the top three worldwide. The company had two projects on which they had to find an optimal solution. One of them requiring kinematic and load calculations to be performed on a seat height adjuster mechanism controlled by the driver/passenger using a pump lever with a low operating torque for easy actuation and the other one on rear-vehicle storage capacity.

The solutions came thanks to LMS's software LMS Virtual.Lab Motion in which you can simulate the realistic motion and loads of mechanical systems. It permits design engineers to quickly analyze and optimize the real-world behavior of mechanical designs and to guarantee that they perform as expected, before committing to expensive physical prototype testing.

Design process improvement

On their first project Faurecia used the software to create a virtual model of the mechanism by importing data from CAD. LMS Virtual.Lab’s ability to represent non-permanent contact between parts - an important feature since contact plays a critical role in determining friction between so many moving parts. Modeling these contacts in LMS Virtual.Lab Motion lets seat engineers accurately predict normal and tangential forces on these components.

On the other project, Faurecia used LMS’ solutions to study the backrest fold-down capability to increase rear-vehicle storage capacity. Dynamic simulations were also used to study the real-life behavior of the car seat under actual passenger seating conditions. Currently under development, this "Easy Break" function relies on springs at the lever joints to help actuate the seat with minimal applied pressure.

1-2-3 model template for future designs

And that isn't all: thanks to LMS Virtual.Lab Motion, designers will gain a huge amount of time using this fold-down function. They will "just" have to enter key parameters into a simulation template instead of recreating models from scratch each time.

Now when you will seat on a car, you will probably ask yourself what's under it. Maybe you will talk about it to your car seller but I'm not sure they will help… So take advantage of this blogpost to ask your questions to LMS!

> Find out how LMS Virtual.Lab Motion can help you and discover the other solutions of LMS.
> Read the full LMS-Faurecia success story.

Alexandre