Looking to further extend its digital reach from engineering
to real factory operations, Dassault Systemes
has acquired Intercim, a
maker of manufacturing operations management software, for $36.5 million.
The merger caps off the companies' long-standing partnership
history, which includes joint efforts in the aerospace and defense industry, most
prominently, a collaboration around the Boeing 787 program, as well as a
minority investment in Intercim made by Dassault Systemes in 2009. While the DELMIA
digital manufacturing platform is used to virtually define and monitor all
production processes, Intercim takes it a step further by allowing customers in
highly regulated industries like A&D and life sciences to demonstrate that what
they built is exactly how they planned to build it and use the conformity
information as part of the rigorous certification process.
Company officials positioned the merger as a part of the
strategy to extend DELMIA's footprint in digital manufacturing and production
to reach a large community of new users on the shop floor. By syncing the
capabilities of the two systems, manufacturing and product engineers can glean
an immediate and common understanding of any potential non-conformance issues
or deviations related to any products being built on the factory floor. Traditionally,
companies have used paper-based processes to manage and track operations on the
shop floor and there is little to no real-time visibility between manufacturing
personnel and engineers, let alone a single system used to facilitate shared
data access and manage feedback.
"We realized there is value in creating digital continuity
between the two systems," says Patrick Michel, vice president of marketing for
DELMIA. Specifically, the two platforms working in concert give engineers
visibility into manufacturing operations to ensure their designs are compliant
with the organization's manufacturing layout and capabilities, while production
personnel can diagnose problems and provide immediate feedback to engineering.
The end result of this digital continuity: The ability to correct issues more
quickly as well as to improve product quality and production efficiency, Michel
says.
Given the companies's history of collaboration, much of the
work to integrate DELMIA with Intercim's product family has been done. A
version of the Intercim platform fully integrated with DELMIA was released last
year. "This is not the usual case of a company buying another company and then
scrambling to integrate," says Romain Lavault, vice president of strategy for
Intercim. "The integration has been done and already sold [to joint
customers.]"
Dassault Systèmes Extends Digital Footprint With Intercim Acquisition

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