French automotive supplier achieves engineering productivity gains with product lifecycle management solution
Westford, MA — May 5, 2005 — Plastic Omnium Auto Exterior, a tier-one automotive supplier headquartered in France, said it has achieved productivity gains in its engineering activities as a result of recently deploying the MatrixOne product lifecycle management (PLM) platform.
The platform was deployed to enable the creation at Plastic Omnium Auto Exterior of a global collaborative workspace and to increase the efficiency and standardization of the company's core product development processes. The automotive supplier estimates that a return on investment for the software deployment will be achieved within four years.
The dispersed nature of its automobile product development teams was one of the primary reasons behind Plastic Omnium Auto Exterior's decision to deploy a PLM solution. The company wanted to build a collaborative network that would allow both its own teams and external partners, which are geographically scattered and cover multiple disciplines, to have access to and share product design and production data in real time, thus accelerating the approval process and innovation cycle.
In an automobile sector where product lifecycles and time-to-market are constantly being reduced, and prices are under pressure, the company's objectives were to eliminate processes with little added-value and to decrease delivery times.
In 2001, Plastic Omnium Auto Exterior carried out a comparative study of a number of PLM solutions currently on the market, with the MatrixOne PLM platform ultimately distinguishing itself with regard to the automotive supplier's unique needs.
"MatrixOne's solution appeared to us to be the best one adapted to our function as an automotive supplier. Our initial choice has been confirmed by the position taken by our colleagues in the market," explained Plastic Omnium Auto Exterior's PLM Project Manager. "It is our intention to capitalize on MatrixOne's platform and applications to build internal reference databases and standards libraries. This will eliminate the repetition of certain tasks and help us to deliver quality products more quickly and at more competitive prices. The fact that we can easily integrate CAO tools is also an important advantage."
