Dassault Systèmes SA
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Dassault Systèmes S.A. -- Company History Contact Angel Investors Login Services Company Forum Blog Buzz PDM/PLM that works World class Teamcenter PDM/PLM is now affordable and deployable! www.acuityinc.com [acronym] online Commune. Share. Explore. Public Sector Design Community www.acronymonline.org Mouthwatering Food Gifts Get Happiness Delivered With H& D. Gourmet Chocolate, Fruit & Treats! www.Harrya Company Histories: # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Search thousands of company histories: Dassault Systèmes S.A. Get 50 expert sample business plans and put your great idea down on paper! Find Angel Investors in your area Address: 9, quai Marcel Dassault BP 310 92156 Suresnes Cedex France Telephone: (33) 1 40 99 40 99 Fax: (33) 1 42 04 45 81 http://www.dsweb.com Statistics: Public Company Incorporated: 1981 Employees: 1,672 Sales: FFr 1.96 billion (US$ 335 million) (1997) Stock Exchanges: Paris NASDAQ Ticker Symbol: DASTY SICs: 7372 Prepackaged Software; 7371 Computer Programming Services; 5045 Computers, Peripherals, and Software Company History: Dassault Systèmes S.A. is the world's leading developer of CAD/CAM/CAE (computer-assisted design, manufacturing, engineering) software, with a product family of more than 120 interrelated component software packages enabling the implementation of design, analysis, manufacturing, and post-production support systems tailored to clients' specific needs. Dassault's CATIA and CADAM software products permit engineering and product design teams, generally working across a network, to develop prototype products, as well as to provide software-based modeling, assembly, testing, analysis and other procedures using three-dimensional images, eliminating the expense of building physical models and prototypes during a product's initial design phase. Beyond the design and engineering of a product, the company's software enables clients to develop and implement full-scale manufacturing systems, while also providing post-production support capacity, including quality assurance and product data generation. One of the originators of the three-dimensional CAD/CAM/CAE market, Dassault has sold some 100,000 'seats,' or licenses, of its CATIA and CADAM software products, to more than 10,000 clients worldwide. In the 1990s, the company's software has been used to develop seven out of every ten new airplanes and four out of every ten new cars worldwide, including those from such corporations as Dassault Aviation, Boeing, Aerospatiale, BMW, Chrysler, Peugeot, Honda, Lockheed Martin, and others. CATIA has been used to design such products as Chrysler's Voyager minivans, RAM pickups, and Viper and Neon automobiles. Aircraft designed using CATIA include the Boeing 777, the Falcon 2000 business jet, and the Rafale jet fighter plane from Dassault Aviation. In addition to the aerospace and automotive/transportation industries, Dassault's primary markets include consumer goods, with clients such as Black & Decker, Electrolux, and Sony; plant design and shipbuilding, with clients including General Dynamics and Technip; and fabrication and assembly, with clients including ABB, Staubli, and Valmet. Dassault's CATIA and CADAM product family forms the core of the company's development efforts. Users of the linked CATIA and CADAM system can achieve an end-to-end product development process from initial product specification, design and testing, through engineering analysis, to full-scale manufacturing utilizing a sole systems-wide interface, database, and programming set. Product development employs simultaneous solid-body, surface, and wireframe rendering. The use of both parametric modeling--in which the entire process responds to a series of fixed parameters--and variation modeling, which enables the ability to apply changes to individual components--for example, for customization purposes--without being required to redefine the entire parameter set, offers users sophisticated 'next-generation' flexibility in the design and post- design processes. The integration of CAE and CAM processes within the CAD process enable not only sophisticated stress and meshing analysis, but also the concurrent definition of the manufacturing process. The fully integrated CAD/CAM/CAE system enables manufacturers to eliminate costly physical modeling steps, improve quality control procedures, and achieve a more efficient and faster design&ndashø&ndash′oduct development system. In addition, the integration of manufacturing processes http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Dassault-Systegrave;mes-SA-Company-History.html[14-Dec-2010 12:09:25 PM] Dassault Systèmes S.A. -- Company History in the design phase provides the ability to avoid the need to retool the production process, as the early design phase of a product can be adapted to the manufacturer's existing machine park. Finally, CATIA and CADAM users have access to the system's knowledge base capacity, providing access to product and specification history, as well as the integration of industry standards, regulatory requirements, and the client's own specifications throughout the design and manufacturing process. In addition to its CATIA-CANAM product families, Dassault also develops and distributes CATWEB Navigator, a real-time intranet and web-based browser allowing worldwide access to clients' database and product development systems. Other products include Enovia, a computer-assisted design application supporting the emerging PDM II (product data management) and extended enterprise markets. The acquisition of Deneb adds that company's principally Unix- and Windows NT based products to the Dassault's traditional IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Silicon Graphics platform focus. Similarly, SolidWorks, acquired in 1997, adds that company's set of CAD products, enabling Dassault to extend its product solutions to the Windows- based PC market. Both Deneb and Solidworks continue their independent operations. The company also operates direct subsidiaries in the United States and Japan. Since its inception, Dassault Systèmes has been partnered with IBM, which provides the company's primary marketing, distribution, and support services through IBM's Engineering Technology Solutions and Business Partners organizations. Apart from providing Dassault with a combined sales staff of some 1,500, the IBM partnership arrangement has also enabled Dassault to gain a broad penetration of the world's leading industrial markets. Dassault also maintains its own sales force of approximately 200, with which it markets its products and offers support directly to a growing number of clients. Europe continues to account for the company's primary market, with nearly 60 percent of Dassault's installed product base, compared to 23 percent in the United States, and 14 percent in the Asian market. Industry-wide, Dassault has captured an estimated 16 percent of the total CAD/CAM/CAE market. Dassault Systèmes has been a public company since its 1996 introduction to the Paris and NASDAQ stock exchanges. More than 60 percent of the company's stock continues to be held by former parent Dassault Aviation, and ultimate parent Dassault Industries. Pioneering the Third Dimension in the 1970s Dassault Systèmes grew directly out of the aerospace industry's search for more sophisticated drafting tools that could not only aid in streamlining the development process, but also respond to the increasing complexity of aviation design. Computer technology had already entered the manufacturing process, offering numerical-controlled tooling functions and the first CAM systems. The appearance of the microcomputer in the 1970s offered broader applications of computer technology, particularly for product design. One of the earliest efforts to replace hand-drawn drafting with computer-assisted design software was a program developed by Lockheed, called CADAM, for Computer-Augmented Drafting and Manufacturing. CADAM enabled drafters and engineers to automate much of the two-dimensional drafting process, using the computer to perform the necessary calculations. Among the first CADAM customers was Marcel Dassault, one of the pioneers of the French aviation industry, and head of Avions Marcel Dassault, the forerunner to Dassault Aviation. Dassault purchased CADAM licenses in 1975. Yet, despite the advantages offered by CADAM and similar packages of the period, the software functioned more or less as an electronic drafting board and remained limited in its applications for the complex demands of aeronautical design. Dassault sought software that would add the third-dimension to the computer screen. Finding no such software to suit its needs, the company formed its own development team in 1977; by the end of the 1970s, Dassault's programmers had developed the predecessor to CATIA, becoming the first to bring three-dimensional modeling to the design process. CATIA (for Computer-Aided Three Dimensional Interactive Application) represented an industry breakthrough. The addition of a third plane to the drafting process eliminated many of the errors encountered when attempting to translate a two-dimensional drawing into a physical model, offered greater interaction among drafters and engineers, while reducing--and eventually all but eliminating--the expense of building models and prototypes for each step of the product development process. At the beginning of the 1980s, Avions Marcel Dassault decided to market CATIA to other aerospace manufacturers. In 1981, the company created Dassault Systèmes, transferring its 15-member