CATIA 3DEXPERIENCE and Trends in Design and Manufacturing (Part 2 of 2)

This is the second, and last part in the interview series with Frédéric Martin, did you miss out on the first part? Find it here: CATIA, 3D Printing, Systems Engineering and Trends in Design Manufacturing, Part 1

JG: Systems Engineering is a powerful concept to radically reduce lead-time while improving product performance and quality. What industries are first to adopt this within 3DXEXPERIENCE, and what can we learn from them?

FM: The leading industries are Automotive and Aerospace. Dassault Systèmes always work very closely with partners to develop new solutions and Systems Engineering is no exception. The early adopters of Systems Engineering – either for Mechatronics or Embedded Electronic Architecture or System Architecture are from these two industries, and several leading OEM have pilots in production. Benefits are impressive and those solutions are new differentiators. Important to mention that complexity management can alter or inhibit innovation, the true challenge becomes the ability to manage requirements, to support structured and unstructured collaboration and unleash creativity.

JG: What is Dassault customer experience regarding performance on large assemblies in 3DEXPERIENCE vs V5?

FM: We can manage much larger assemblies in 3DEXPERIENCE than we are doing with V5. This is the value provided by V6 architecture. We are not reaching the limits yet. I would say that the more we use the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, the more we see the limits being extended. For example, one customer is using 3DEXPERIENCE to build ships with over 10 million components. Having access to a complete digital mock-up of your ship, and manage with 200 kilometers of pipes, 2000 kilometers of wires, 30000 electronic sensors, is really a breakthrough.

JG: And clearly being able to handle large assemblies effectively will also impact the mid-sized ones.

FM: Yes, exactly. Until a few years ago, we were not seeing much attention for Product Lifecycle Management from industries such Energy, Process and Utilities or Construction. But now, with the increasing complexity generated by the connected objects, sustainable development, eco-responsibility and traceability, we see a strong interest from many newcomers driven by innovation and willingness to benefit from solutions used in other industries. But now thanks to the power of the 3DEXPERIENCE, they can benefit easily from new capabilities provided by an integrated platform, giving access to intelligent dash boarding, smart project management, and new Engineering services, we see new potential in those industries. We have several prototypes on-going with major players – on 3DEXPERINCE platform – and first benefits are amazing.

JG: What would be your top 3 recommendations for an existing CATIA V5 user today – how can they approach CATIA V6 and 3DXEPERIENCE, and what is the best way of adopting it?

FM: My first recommendation would be to define very precisely top business challenges and top priorities. My second recommendation would be to go for the quick wins. Because everyone wants to see short term benefits. My third recommendation is to always make sure that users will benefit from those quick wins. We are asking a lot of efforts to users to change the way they work, and they seldom see the benefit of it in their daily works. Invest in change management and involve key users to drive change is key to business changes and process transformation.

JG: Customers that are using other PLM systems, what is the right approach to get them to run CATIA 3DEXPERIENCE? What would be the path for them looking into this and the benefits of 3DEXPERIENCE?

FM: Such a change of PLM Systems is really an opportunity for customers to address existing changes but also to address future challenges. Very often evaluations and benchmarks are used to replicate what was done in the past not to prepare for the future. Most of our customers are leaders in their field and want to stay at the leading edge of Innovation so that they need to care about competition and new products that will be on the market in next 5 to 10 years. From a user perspective, we have understood the need to seduce young engineers and deliver more intuitive solutions, solutions that are easier to use, solutions that you can reuse during the complete product development journey. All professional users are now using tablets, iPhones, and any other devices at home and they expect to continue their CATIA sessions on any type of device at work.

JG: Simulation is another major topic – what ARE the key benefits using an embedded solution within CATIA?

FM: One of the difficulties in using different set of tools is that you have to convert the data, this is a lot of time spent with risk to have errors and mistakes in the conversion. Since the age of CATIA V5, one of the key benefits of CATIA is the tight integration with SIMULIA and analysis tools. Recently, we have extended CATIA modeler capabilities to increase design /simulation interoperability at a new level thanks to 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Cloud solutions bring this capability to a new level for small and medium-sized businesses.

JG: What’s your opinion on the merger between Technia and Transcat (Now TECHNIA) from a DS and customer perspective?

FM: In my opinion, as I knew Technia and Transcat (Now TECHNIA) before, I can say that they were both great companies with great managers and teams. So I think it is a great move and I did not realize before that there where so many complementarities between these two companies. I see this as a great benefit from a customer perspective. PLM is very complex and there are very few engineering consulting companies like TECHNIA, who are really capable to understand the value at the engineering, manufacturing and simulation level, as well as at the platform level and to deliver it. And this is for me a unique value in the field and now you have clearly the critical mass to address more customers and larger customers.

JG: Thanks for another great talk! Finally I challenge you for a great photo on your favorite sport…

Jonas Gejer exploring high mountains to the left, and Frédéric Martin canoeing to the right.