Grid offering speeds design collaboration

An IBM Product Lifecycle Management Solutions product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Apr 13, 2004

IBM has a new grid-based product offering that helps automotive and aerospace companies speed time to market and improve the quality of their products through a more rapid and comprehensive engineerin

IBM has a new grid-based product offering that helps automotive and aerospace companies speed time to market and improve the quality of their products through a more rapid and comprehensive engineering design analysis.

IBM also embarked on new grid computing projects around the world, including one at Magna Steyr, a leading automotive engineering supplier.

Magna Steyr is one of the world's leading suppliers of niche vehicle production, assembly and concept development, as well as a leading supplier of powertrain modules and all-wheel-drive systems.

By grid-enabling Catia, IBM's collaborative, virtual product development application developed by Dassault Systemes, IBM and Platform Computing, a commercial grid software provider, helped Magna Steyr to analyse the components of an entire vehicle in just a single evening.

In the past, such an analysis took several days.

"Grid technology from IBM and Platform Computing reduced the time required for our clash testing from 72 hours to 4 hours and contributed significantly to enhancing our design quality", said Dr Heinz Mayer, Magna Steyr.

The IBM Grid Offering for Design Collaboration: Clash Analysis in Automotive, Aerospace and Defence helps design engineers use grid technology for more rapid evaluation of design alternatives during sub-assembly clash analysis.

Developed in co-operation with Platform Computing, the offering includes Catia and Enovia application software.

It reduces the time required to capture, compile and analyse clash research data and can accelerate product development and time to market.

"Clash analysis is an integral part of our PLM Solutions, and critical to our customers' success", said Dominique Florack, Executive Vice-President, Strategy, Research and Development, Dassault Systemes.

"The combination of Dassault Syst?mes' ENOVIA Clash Management offering along with IBM's grid technology can provide a unique competitive advantage.

We are working with IBM to leverage the power of Grid computing to help our customers take maximum advantage of PLM".

According to independent market analyst IDC, grid computing in the manufacturing sector is projected to be a $2.6 billion market opportunity by 2006.

IDC projects the total grid opportunity at more than $13 billion by 2007, a compound annual growth rate of 83%.

"Increased bandwidth, the acceptance of industry standards and sophisticated software are the key enablers of grid computing and IBM has embraced each component within our product lifecycle management portfolio", said Scott Hopkins, General Manager, IBM PLM.

"Leveraging Grid computing, our supply chain customers are taking guess work and costly errors out of product design to position themselves as innovative partners".

"As automotive vendors outsource more and more design work of mechanical and electrical components to their supply partners, dealing with more complexity in less time becomes a major competitive advantage", said Merten Slominsky, General Manager, Industrial Manufacturing, Platform.

"Magna Steyr has realised that integrating leading PLM and PDM software with Platform's Grid software can produce substantial gains in quality and time to market for their core business.

As a consequence, their application produces results up to 18 times faster, delivering outstanding productivity gains".

IBM is also involved in new grid projects at Cetim, the French technical centre for the mechanical industry, which will use grid technology in design and fabrication; at the Institut Francais du Petrole (French Petroleum Institute or IFP), an independent research centre for oil exploration, and at Omron, a Japanese electronics manufacturer, to speed product development.