Dassault Systèmes Empowers Manufacturers to “Design for the Environment”

ENOVIA Materials Compliance Central™ Leverages V6 Platform to Deliver New “Eco Design” Capabilities Enabling Automotive, High Tech Companies to Minimize Use of Hazardous Substances




LOWELL, Mass.– Dassault Systèmes (DS) (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, today unveiled important updates to ENOVIA Materials Compliance Central™ for automotive and high tech industries regulatory compliance. Built on the ENOVIA V6 platform, ENOVIA Materials Compliance Central is a business-process application designed to empower companies to adopt proactive environmental compliance strategies throughout a product’s lifecycle, from design to disposal. New “Eco-Design” capabilities enable automotive and high-tech manufacturers to meet the increasingly-stringent regulations mandated by the EU, specifically the End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV), the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) directives. These regulations are focused on the European market, but automotive and high-tech/electronics manufacturers must concern themselves with a broad variety of other regional compliance mandates such as China RoHS, Korea RoHS-ELV, and California RoHS.



Traditionally, the materials-compliance process has been reactive, where compliance reporting and analysis is done late in the product development lifecycle; this approach can have a major impact on profitability and inhibit a company’s ability to bring new products to market in a timely manner. By being proactive, companies can enhance their environmental stewardship by minimizing the use of hazardous substances in new product development and also reducing the cost impact of the resulting changes as they seek a smaller environmental footprint.



“Compliance initiatives like RoHS, WEEE, REACH, and 21 CFR part 11 have been behind integration of PLM and sourcing for the past five years, but many manufacturers are still unprepared to address these regulations,“ stated Mike Burkett, vice president, AMR Research in a recent report entitled PLM Top Business Drivers for 2008. “The manufacturers that are—or thought they were—prepared are realizing they need to build in a deeper level of data and supplier analytics into their environmental compliance systems.”



“With the world’s attention focused on ‘green’ issues, manufacturers are facing increased societal pressure beyond EU, Chinese and Korean regulations. Given the thousands of parts and multitude of suppliers necessary to bring a car or semiconductor to market, complying with these regulations is an incredibly complex process,” said Mike Zepp, director of material compliance solutions for Dassault Systèmes. “With ENOVIA Materials Compliance Central, we’re taking this to the next level by empowering companies to build compliance and, ultimately, ‘green’ initiatives into the entire product lifecycle, starting with product design"



By leveraging the ENOVIA V6 platform, ENOVIA Materials Compliance Central supports Dassault Systèmes vision of PLM 2.0, harnessing collaborative intelligence from diverse online communities. This approach provides key stakeholders with access to material compliance information throughout the product lifecycle from product development to manufacturing to end-of-life recycling. By providing an out-of-the-box solution customers are able to implement industry standard data collection and reporting formats to realize immediate value from their investment. Built on a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), all deliverables related to collecting, integrating, analyzing, and reporting material compliance information are accomplished in a single platform and environment, eliminating translation errors and ensuring a “single source of the truth.”



The latest version of ENOVIA Materials Compliance Central includes the following features:



* Materials Compliance Analysis — Engineering can easily generate part-level reports to help determine compliance with customer or market specific requirements. Engineering can also analyze the product’s compliance using what-if scenarios;

* Maximize the Reuse of Compliant Components — Design engineers can make component selection decisions based on the component’s compliance rating;

* Assess Impact of New Restricted Substances — Advanced “where-used” capabilities allow engineers to quickly identify non-compliant components and the products that they are used in. Engineers can then leverage the extensive search capabilities to identify alternatives, or “green parts,” as well as the identification of lead-free options; and

* Manage Supplier Material Declarations — Compliance engineers can initiate and send material declaration requests, with due dates and instructions, to its supply chain. Compliance engineers can monitor the supplier’s progress and review, validate and approve/reject all received supplier submissions.