Package deal brings PLM to consumer sector

An IBM Product Lifecycle Management Solutions product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Mar 20, 2006

Styled Plastic and Packaging is an integrated package designed to help consumer goods businesses to launch more new products, in less time.

IBM and Dassault Systemes have announced Styled Plastic and Packaging (SP and P), a new complete, integrated solution enabling consumer goods businesses to launch more new products, in less time.

Manufacturers can reduce the time spent developing their products, bringing them more quickly to market, and thereby increasing customer satisfaction and potentially capturing new market opportunities for sustainable growth.

Manufacturers of styled products face growing pressure to differentiate their products and increase their responsiveness to global market pressures.

Development processes are often disjointed, inefficient and complex, resulting in an inability to deliver the right products on time, and potential loss of revenue and market share.

By increasing responsiveness with SP and P, companies can boost customer satisfaction and create brand loyalty, while minimising the high costs of product development, knowledge management and data conversion.

"Companies deploying SP and P can offer more distinguished style value than their competitors", notes Bruno Latchague, EVP Development and Support, Industry Solutions, Dassault Systemes.

"SP and P enables them to quickly integrate innovative technologies into their products, and reuse experience from previous projects, reducing the number of physical prototypes and therefore total development time".

"The result is a wider range of innovative products to meet the needs of a demanding market".

The SP and P solution combines Catia V5 for product design and simulation, Smarteam for business process and lifecycle management, and a unique and evolving set of dedicated DS PLM Practices, developed by Dassault Systemes.

Advanced training, based on extensive knowledge of customer experiences, has been developed to facilitate quick, easy and successful solution implementation.

The Styled Plastic and Packaging solution's capabilities comprise the best-in-class industrial design tools of Catia V5: Imagine and Shape (IMA) and Functional Molded Parts (FMP).

Imagine and Shape provides designers with unique and powerful subdivision surface modelling technology to rapidly create and style today's complex aesthetic surfaces in 3D, without prior manual sketching or prototyping, providing them with complete creative freedom.

Design engineers using the Functional Molded Parts product can focus on parts modelling, rather than spending their time solving technical problems, defining the complete functional specification for both parts and tooling and delivering breakthrough reductions in the design-to-manufacturing cycle.

The reverse engineering and rendering capabilities of Catia V5 facilitate 3D product visualisation, bringing an early understanding of the impact of design changes, and driving product quality, innovation and communication.

With best-in-class collaborative product lifecycle solutions based on Smarteam, businesses benefit from intercompany integration of their design and manufacturing processes, including product data management.

SP and P Solution's tools also allow designers to work concurrently on the same designs, revise them rapidly, and make late modifications, giving manufacturers a new degree of flexibility for efficient multi-site concurrent engineering, and minimising cycle costs.

"Today's next must-have consumer goods item needs to get into the hands of the user at the right time, at the right price, with the best mix of functionality and features, and all with an award-winning design", says Mark Lefebvre, Global Marketing Executive, Product Lifecycle Management solutions, IBM.

"The Styled Plastic and Packaging Solution can help our clients meet those tough challenges and focus on the innovation that matters".

At the core of the Styled Plastic and Packaging Solution is Collaborative Generative Design (CGD), comprising the Smarteam and Catia V5 applications, which provides styled product manufacturers with an attractively priced common platform.

Delivered as a PLM Solution for medium-sized businesses, this collaborative base can then be extended with dedicated configurations to address the specific requirements of individual users.

They also benefit from a total solution addressing their PLM infrastructure needs, including hardware and middleware to manage security, backup and recovery, high performance and flexibility.