Citroen confirms PLM agreements

IBM and Dassault Systemes have announced the confirmation of their agreements with automotive manufacturer PSA Peugeot Citroen, following the successful implementation of PLM software.

IBM and Dassault Systemes have announced the confirmation of their agreements with automotive manufacturer PSA Peugeot Citroen.

Following the successful implementation of PLM solutions based on CATIA V4 and VPM, PSA Peugeot Citroen signed a contract for the deployment of CATIA V5 in December 2004 and through 2005 pursued its commitment to PLM with a joint work plan leveraging next generation digital mock up tools.

This will help PSA Peugeot Citroen to speed the development of innovative cars and ensure optimal price-quality ratios, thus helping strengthen its leading position in the global automotive industry.

PSA Peugeot Citroen's current challenge is to answer an ever-increasing demand for new car models, which need to be developed as quickly as possible.

To dramatically speed the renewal of its Peugeot and Citroen car models - one-third of its portfolio has been updated in the past year - PSA Peugeot Citroen is using IBM and Dassault Systemes' PLM solutions.

These will be a key factor in helping PSA Peugeot Citroen attain its objective of growing sales to 4 million cars by 2010.

The group has broadened its PLM implementation and deployed a full global IBM PLM solution including the latest V5 portfolio of solutions (CATIA, DELMIA, and ENOVIA) developed by Dassault Systemes, IBM's middleware (DB2 database) and hardware (IBM Regatta eServers), and using IBM Global Services to ensure high availability of the PLM environment.

PSA Peugeot Citroen is gradually migrating from CATIA V4 to CATIA V5 and deploying DELMIA in an integrated 3D digital mock-up environment.

The group will leverage CATIA V5's new functionalities in a Virtual Product Management (VPM) environment, tailored to its specific needs by IBM Global Services, Dassault Systemes' and PSA Peugeot Citroen's teams.

The objective is to launch future car programs faster and in an innovative way, reusing existing knowledge with template-based approaches.

PSA Peugeot Citroen has also selected DELMIA Digital Manufacturing Solutions from Dassault Systemes to optimize final assembly processes in its manufacturing plants.

Currently, these solutions are serving 29 vehicle development projects in eight different plants throughout the world.

"In a market that never stops segmenting and diversifying, the success of our group lies in its capacity to develop and launch differentiated and innovative cars as soon as possible to satisfy our demanding and diverse customers," said Jean-Luc Perrard, vice-president, Product/Process Information Technology at PSA Peugeot Citroen.

"The deployment of IBM and Dassault Systemes' PLM solutions helps us focus on our core businesses and guarantees the feasibility of new concepts that respect our security rules.

In December 2005, to effectively anticipate future evolution of the automotive industry, PSA Peugeot Citroen, IBM and Dassault Systemes defined a work plan to build the next generation digital mock-up for 2009.

This will increase customer satisfaction as security and comfort requirements can be evaluated and optimized at an early design stage, and will avoid costly last minute changes.

Thanks to the integrated PLM environment, design ideas will be shared earlier in the process with extended teams.

This way, consistency between simulation results and CAD data can be guaranteed, helping speed up design decisions and constantly optimizing quality.

With the PSA Peugeot Citroen group actively pursuing international expansion particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, China and Latin America - IBM and Dassault Systemes' collaborative PLM solutions give suppliers remote access to product development data and enable designers from 45 sites of the PSA Peugeot Citroen group around the world to access digital mock-ups in a well-controlled environment, each user having access to a limited set of data, according to their working perimeter.

"PSA Peugeot Citroen, a world-class group within a highly global and competitive industry, has partnered with IBM on innovation, its key differentiator.

Increased productivity, optimal quality and quicker time-to-market with the ability to keep development costs at a minimum: these are the benefits that PSA Peugeot Citroen can rely on with our collaborative PLM solutions.

The recent agreement demonstrates our total commitment to helping our customers meet their critical business challenges," said Herve Rolland, vice-president, PLM Solutions, IBM Europe.

"PSA Peugeot Citroen's decision to extend its PLM implementation by migrating from CATIA V4 to V5 and deploying the DELMIA Digital Manufacturing Solution, underscores the value it places on our PLM solutions and in our partnership," said Etienne Droit, executive vice-president PLM Sales and Distribution, Dassault Systemes.

"We have been working in close collaboration with PSA Peugeot Citroen for many years to develop specialized automotive best practices and modules which help them to focus on innovation.

The result is a winning partnership for our companies.

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