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Michelin Chooses CATIA as Process Integration Platform

16 September 1998

Michelin Chooses CATIA as Process Integration Platform to Design, Simulate and Manufacture Tires

    CLERMONT-FERRAND and PARIS--Sept. 14, 1998--Michelin, the worldwide leading tire manufacturer, Dassault Systemes and IBM announced today the signing of a strategic Partnership Agreement in which Michelin chooses CATIA version 5 as a strategic solution to design simulate and manufacture its tires and will rely on the development platform of this new generation of the CATIA system to develop and integrate its specific applications.
    The agreement covers the progressive installation of several hundred CATIA Version 5 stations on Windows NT platforms. The solutions will be used worldwide on all Michelin product ranges, car and vans, agricultural, trucks, construction equipment, aircraft and two-wheelers.
    The three partners are working to set up CAX solutions (CAD/CAM/CAE) for the group around CATIA following the re-engineering of the design and manufacturing processes for tires and moulds. Michelin, Dassault Systemes and IBM project teams are already operational to specify requirements and guarantee optimal transition of current applications to the CATIA environment (in-house functions and specific developments) while ensuring that existing data is protected.
    Following and in-depth consultation begun late 1996 including all the major players in the CAD/ CAM market. CATIA was chosen as the most innovative and most open technological platform and so the best suited to support all disciplines and processes in tire manufacturing, and also the one most adaptable to the group's working methods. In addition to technical potential and suitability, it is also the type of partnership offered by IBM and Dassault Systemes that won Michelin over to the project.
    "We plan to use the CATIA technological platform to renovate our current CAD/CAM/CAE applications in depth based on an heterogeneous set of programs and specific applications developed in house" explains a spokesperson form Michelin. "We are depending on CATIA's functions and on the openness of its architecture as well as on the partnership with Dassault Systemes and IBM to provide the Tire Design/ Simulation/Manufacture process with state of the art tools using all the power of parameterisation and associativity, enabling us to progress towards virtual prototyping and simultaneous engineering."
    Both companies share the same view of virtual prototyping to define, simulate and optimise a product even before it exists and throughout its life cycle' says Dominique Florack, Executive Vice President. Research and Development, Strategy and Applications Dassault Systemes. "We are delighted to be working in partnership with Michelin to provide them with a new generation, integrated solution and an open, integration platform to unite their product development process and incorporate their industry expertise."
    Assisting in transforming the company in it search for competitiveness is the strategic route for our development," comments Franck Lerchenmueller, Vice President of IBM's worldwide Engineering Technology Solutions. "We are delighted that a name as prestigious as Michelin has chosen us, with Dassault Systemes, as partner in its development. The choice confirms yet again CATIA's leadership.
    Michelin, this year celebrating the centenary of its famous character Bibendum, has been a leader in technology for more than a century. The Group, with 120,000 staff, achieved a turnover of 79.7 billion French francs in 1997. Michelin manufactures tires for the world's transport and has acquired a universal reputation for its tourist guides and maps. Selling in over 180 countries, the Group has 81 production plants and 6 research centers, spread across 19 countries and on every continent. The principal and traditional path of its development, technological innovation, is found both in the products that have made it famous and in the process used to make them.
    Dassault Systemes is a worldwide recognised leader in CAx and PDM II markets. CATIA-CADAM Solutions with Deneb, the digital manufacturing company, address the CAD/CAM/CAE process-centric market. Through a unique strategic partnership, CATIA-CADAM Solutions are marketed, distributed and supported by IBM worldwide. This unique partnership is now extended to PDM II solutions. SolidWorks, a Dassault Systemes company, addresses the CAD design-centric market, with its flagship native Windows NT product and its dedicated distribution channel. In the network-computing environments, the Java-based CATweb product line provides a graphical window into native enterprise product data. For the PDM II market, ENOVIA Corp., a Dassault Systemes company, provides with its ENOVIAvpm and ENOVIApm product lines a new multi-CAD collaborative and innovative environment for virtual product and process modeling and management across the extended enterprise.
    Information on CATIA-CADAM solutions is available on the CATIA home page at the following address: http://www.catia.com.
    CATIA is a registered trademark of Dassault Systemes SA.