EADS Selects ENOVIA for its Military Aircraft Division

Munich (Germany) and Paris (France), 15 September 2000…The European Aeronautic, Defense and Space Company (EADS), the world's third largest aerospace company, IBM and Dassault Systemes (NASDAQ: DASTY, Bourse de Paris) announced that the EADS Military Aircraft Business Unit (EADS Military Aircraft) has selected ENOVIAVPM as its e-business solution for engineering at its sites in Germany. The agreement includes the purchase of 280 ENOVIAVPM licenses, which EADS Military Aircraft will use to manage the designs of the tens of thousands of parts for the company's aircraft programs in Germany. EADS Military Aircraft will run ENOVIAVPM on IBM RS/6000TM workstations in conjunction with CATIA Solutions, the aerospace industry's leading computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering (CAD/CAM/CAE) software.

EADS Military Aircraft selected ENOVIAVPM for its full integration with CATIA, and for its capabilities in managing highly complex processes with ease, efficiency and speed. These will be essential to the success of the initial project for which EADS Military Aircraft will use ENOVIAVPM: production of the Eurofighter Typhoon, a twin engine, multi-role combat advanced aircraft developed jointly by Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.

EADS Military Aircraft is responsible for the jet's center fuselage and the right wing. These highly complex areas account for 44 percent of the aircraft, including the center fuselage avionics, hydraulics, fuel system, intake, cooling system, flight control, secondary power system, and gun installations.

Because the center fuselage contains a large number of components compacted into an extremely small space, EADS Military Aircraft engineers will create CATIA 3D digital mockups (DMUs) of all 10000 parts of the final production units. This will enable the company to save an estimated 20 percent of the time needed for future aircraft development because EADS Military Aircraft engineers can use the DMUs for clash detection and other analysis operations. DMUs will also enable EADS Military Aircraft engineers to work efficiently with these models when exchanging fuselage information among company sites within Germany, and among their project partners throughout Europe.

More importantly, however, using 3D digital mockups with ENOVIA will let EADS Military Aircraft manage its CATIA models to improve the design and quality of the fuselage parts. Like many military planes, the Eurofighter will evolve as technology improvements arise. This means that the configuration of the center fuselage may change as much as 50 percent over the 30-year service life of the plane. With ENOVIAVPM, managing these changes will be quick and easy. For example, when a Eurofighter customer requests an avionics upgrade, EADS Military Aircraft engineers, using ENOVIAVPM, can locate the exact configurations and series in only a few minutes, rather than searching for days through physical drawings. Not only will EADS Military Aircraft engineers be able to respond to their customers in a minimum of time, but they will be certain that they have identified all planes in question.

EADS Military Aircraft will also use ENOVIAVPM as the e-business solution for the development of a new light-combat and advanced trainer aircraft, the Mako family. EADS Military Aircraft engineers will design the entire Mako jet in CATIA and manage it in ENOVIAVPM, making it the first military airplane that is 100 percent digital. EADS Military Aircraft estimates that using CATIA and ENOVIAVPM through all disciplines and stages of the jet's life cycle will improve efficiency and productivity, and reduce development time from 10 years to 2 years.

Explained Dr.-Ing. Gerd Berchtold, EADS Military Aircraft senior manager of aircraft equipment design, "ENOVIAVPM is the perfect tool for our aircraft programs. It turns our CATIA digital mockups into living models-the DMU is identical to the manufactured jet. And, it gives our designers a high degree of freedom, within our pre-established rules, to find creative solutions that best meet our customers' needs."

Scott Hopkins, vice president digital enterprise sales, IBM Product Lifecycle Management, commented, "EADS Military Aircraft's vote of confidence confirms IBM's leading role in helping the aerospace industry deliver the best possible products to customers."

Said Joel Lemke, president of ENOVIA Corporation, "The expanded use of our solutions within EADS Military Aircraft to include ENOVIAVPM on these very critical military projects is a clear testimony to the value that ENOVIA represents, as well as to the breadth of capability that ENOVIA provides in support of sophisticated, distributed product development. We are pleased to be playing an expanded role in support of the Eurofighter program, and in contributing to the achievement of EADS Military Aircraft's aggressive goals for reduction in development cycle time."

ENOVIAVPM is part of ENOVIA Portfolio, a set of solutions that make manufacturers more competitive by helping them manage electronically all aspects of the product life cycle. CATIA Solutions is the world's leading CAD/CAM/CAE software. Dassault Systemes develops ENOVIAVPM and CATIA; IBM's Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) business unit and IBM Business Partners worldwide market, sell and support them.

About EADS
The Military Aircraft Business Unit (EADS Military Aircraft) of the European Aeronautic, Defense and Space Company (EADS) designs, develops, integrates, manufactures, supports and maintains a wide range of fighter planes, military transport planes and mission aircraft. Its work also involves aircraft-coordinated reconnaissance and electronic warfare systems, training craft and training programs for on-board and ground personnel. Among many other projects, EADS is responsible for the flight control system and the development and production of the center fuselage the Eurofighter, a joint endeavor supported by Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain. Headquartered in Munich, EADS Military Aircraft employs more than 6000 professionals at three locations in Germany.
Information about EADS is available at http://www.eads-nv.com/

About IBM
IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM Sales & Distribution, which supports more than a dozen key industries worldwide, works with companies of all sizes around the world to deploy the full range of IBM technologies.
The fastest way to get more information about IBM is through the IBM home page at http://www.ibm.com/

About Dassault Systemes
Dassault Systemes is the premier global software developer of PLM solutions, providing companies with e-business solutions to implement their digital enterprise, thus creating and simulating the entire product lifecycle from initial concept to product in service. CATIA, DELMIA and ENOVIA solutions support industry-specific business processes to help unleash creativity and innovation, reduce development cycle time, improve quality, competitiveness and shareholder value: CATIA supports the digital product definition and simulation, DELMIA provides solutions to define and simulate lean digital manufacturing processes and ENOVIA delivers enterprise solutions that manage a comprehensive, collaborative and distributed model of the digital product, processes and resources. The combined integration creates the Digital Product lifecycle Pipeline, supporting reuse of corporate knowledge. SolidWorks and Smart Solutions, as Dassault Systemes companies, offer respectively 3D design-centric and TeamPDM software solutions based on Windows.
Information about Dassault Systemes is available at http://www.dsweb.com/

IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. CATIA and ENOVIA are trademarks of Dassault Systemes.

Caption:
A representation of the Eurofighter Typhoon, indicating (in color) the center fuselage to be developed by EADS Military Aircraft.