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SDRC Receives $1 Million Order

30 June 1998

SDRC Receives $1 Million Order for Metaphase Enterprise PDM Software from Arvin Industries, Inc.

    CINCINNATI--June 30, 1998--Structural Dynamics Research Corporation , the PDM market leader, today announced that it has received a $1 million order for Metaphase(R) Enterprise(TM) software and services from the Arvin Exhaust North America (AENA) division of Arvin Industries, Inc., based in Columbus, Ind. Arvin is the leading worldwide manufacturer of vehicle exhaust systems and ride control products, supplying many of the world's top automobile manufacturers, such as Ford Motor Company, General Motors Corporation, Toyota Motor Corporation, Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Fiat, Renault and Volkswagen.
    "We selected the Metaphase product based on SDRC's excellent reputation as the PDM supplier to a number of major engineering-dominated firms, including Ford, Renault and Boeing. The fact that many of our customers and other major suppliers were in production with SDRC's Metaphase PDM impressed us tremendously," said John Grace, Vice President of Systems and Technology, Arvin Industries. "We were also impressed with SDRC's structured methodology for implementing Metaphase. SDRC guided us through the process of identifying all the business requirements and major drivers, so we could map our PDM implementation to those objectives."
    Metaphase Enterprise is the PDM component of the Arvin Total Quality Engineering System (ATQES), Arvin's company-wide adoption of concurrent engineering. AENA is focusing its PDM implementation plan to support four key objectives: 1) Reduce product development life cycles from 36 months to 24 months to 12 months; 2) Extend its design and engineering capabilities to become a complete systems supplier to the automakers; 3) Respond to increased warranty and reliability demands; and 4) Reduce costs continuously.
    To accomplish these objectives, Arvin will use Metaphase PDM software to extend its concurrent engineering processes to its global enterprise. Metaphase Enterprise will be used to organize and archive Arvin's engineering and manufacturing information so that all product data throughout the organization can be retrieved quickly and easily.
    Beginning with six sites in North America, Arvin plans to ultimately roll out its Metaphase implementation to its operations worldwide. By increasing efficiency in the design and engineering process, Arvin expects to launch new products that meet all its objectives - faster time-to-market, reduced costs and higher quality.
    "Quality will rise, that's a given," said Alan Brittingham, Vice President of Advanced Engineering Technologies, Arvin Industries. "Design iterations can be devoted to improvements that raise the value of our products to our customers, lower our costs, and reduce our time to market. Fewer iterations will be spent fixing errors due to relying on outdated information. At a high level, PDM gives our engineers the tools to find out if a design change pushes costs up or down, and to what extent manufacturability is impacted, so they can make better decisions."
    "We are pleased to provide the enterprise product data management (PDM) solution for Arvin," said Ron Schmitz, General Manager of Strategic Marketing and Business Development for the Metaphase Division of SDRC. "With successful implementations of Metaphase in production at major automakers like Ford, Daimler-Benz and Renault, we've proven our ability to deliver enterprise-level solutions to the automotive industry. Arvin's order demonstrates the rapidly gaining momentum for our PDM solutions within the automotive supplier base."
    Arvin Industries is a global manufacturer of automotive exhaust-emission and ride control systems. It has 50 manufacturing facilities and eight technical centers in 16 countries. Arvin's Exhaust division makes original-equipment exhaust systems for General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, Toyota, Renault, Fiat, Volkswagen and BMW, among others, and is over twice the size of its nearest competitor.
    SDRC is a leading international supplier of integrated Mechanical Design Automation and testing software, Product Data Management software, and related services. The Company's products and services help manufacturers optimize product concepts early in the design process, enabling them to significantly improve product quality while reducing product development time and cost. SDRC employs more than 2,200 people and has 64 offices in 16 countries throughout North America, Europe, and the Asia/Pacific region. SDRC's market-leading PDM solution, Metaphase, is developed, marketed and supported by the Metaphase Technology Division of SDRC.
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    Note to Editors: SDRC and Metaphase are registered trademarks, and Metaphase Enterprise is a trademark of Structural Dynamics Research Corporation. All other trademarks or registered trademarks belong to their respective holders.