Dassault投资MES

转自：http://www.managingautomation.com/maonline/news/read/Dassault_Makes_MES_Investment_32508

 

 

In its latest attempt to link product design to production, DassaultSystemes today announced that it has made a minority investment inIntercim LLC, a purveyor of manufacturing execution software for highlyregulated industries.

 

 

Under the agreement — the financial terms of which werenot disclosed — the duo will share intellectual property andcreate a technology solution that closes the loop between productengineering and the shop floor, the companies said.

 

 

While Dassault and Intercim have had a strategic partnershipsince 2004, they are now working to tightly integrate Dassault’s V6 PLM architecture— specifically its DELMIA digital manufacturing software, whichincludes early process planning, modeling, and simulation of assemblylines — with Intercim’s Pertinence software suite forexecuting processes, tracking workflow, and managing quality duringproduction.

 

 

Intercim’s expertise is in the aerospace and defenseindustry, whose constituents conduct global sourcing, run multipartmanufacturing operations, and maintain very separate design andmanufacturing departments. The key to this union, according to DickSlansky, an ARC Advisory Group analyst, is the ability to tie the“as designed” model to the “as built” productand process, something that no vendor has yet achieved, he said.

 

 

To date, much of the attention has been on tying MES to ERP— integration that coordinates materials, scheduling, andfinance, but doesn’t circle back to engineering and design.

 

 

“Dassault is saying it makes more sense to have a systemof knowledge that captures shop floor operations and inspection recordsand … all of the stuff going on down on the shop floor that theengineers don’t know about, and put it into an actionable formthat can be directed back to the engineering organization,”Slansky told Managing Automation.

 

“It’s an alignment of manufacturing andengineering,” said Judson Plapp, Intercim’s vice presidentof marketing and corporate strategy, in an interview. In hisestimation, “that’s more important than the alignment ofMES and finance,” which was exemplified by SAP’s acquisition of MES provider Visiprise.

 

 

The “as built” information generated from theIntercim software will be integrated into Dassault’snext-generation V6 platform and maintained as part of the PLM system,the companies said.

 

 

“This is a key piece on the road to the digitalfactory,” said Patrick Michel, Dassault’s vice president ofDelmia industry solutions and marketing, in an interview. It not onlyenables manufacturers to change designs to improve their productionprocesses, but also adds a new dimension to lifecycle management.“From the birth to the death of an aircraft, there is one versionof the truth,” he said.

 

 

Michel said the minority investment in Intercim“strengthens the partnership to help define the next-generationsolution,” which will offer visual feedback in the form of areal-time 3D model of the production experience.

 

The deal is not exclusive; Dassault will maintain existingrelationships with other MES vendors, including a partnership withiBASEt, which also caters to the aerospace industry. In addition,Dassault has partneredwith control automation vendors Rockwell Automation and SchneiderElectric to link design to control engineering. Both companies marketMES offerings — possible areas for future partnership expansionsfor Dassault.