Dassault Systemes, one of the leading vendors of product life cycle management (PLM) technology, made the benefits of PLM more accessible to small and medium size businesses in October with the announcement of its V5R18 Delmia PLM Express Portfolio.

Dassault introduced the product suite at the 2007 Delmia Worldwide Customer Conference, North America, held October 3 - 4 in Dearborn, MI. The software puts the benefits of PLM into the hands of more than just automakers and aerospace companies.

Said Philippe Charles, Delmia CEO, “Companies that invest in digital manufacturing for PLM can expect faster time to market, fewer quality problems and lower start-up costs. Many smaller suppliers realize this value, but do not have the need to deploy a full PLM strategy at their level. Delmia PLM Express enables these companies with the right set of PLM technologies.”

At the conference, Charles also discussed how the acquisition of UGS by Siemens earlier this year created a “new type of competitor in our PLM business.” He said Delmia views the acquisition as “a good thing. It’s going to be a significant help. We’re still in the learning phase of digital manufacturing. [The acquisition] is extending the value of digital validation into the control engineering and automation domain.”

Delmia itself is doing that with the introduction of “domain specific” versions of PLM Express. For controls engineers, for example, Delmia offers Smart Device Builder capabilities for creating the mechanical, kinematical and logical behavior of devices that can then be used to validate a PLC program in a virtual environment. Virtual commissioning solutions allow control engineers to debug PLC code before the integration of the physical equipment occurs, significantly reducing installation time and maintenance operations costs.

The other four domains covered by PLM Express solutions include:

• Robotics: Delivers robotic simulation and offline programming capabilities.
• Process Planning: Delivers assembly process planning, validation and simulation functionality.
• Ergonomics: Delivers the capability to build kinematic human models and teach human tasks to simulate processes.
• Resource Planning: Provides capabilities to model in 3D and validate the tooling and manufacturing workcells.

www.plmv5.com/delmiaplmexpress