DELMIA And Central Michigan University Enter Into Academic Partnership

    TROY, Mich.--Dec. 18, 2002--Digital manufacturing solutions provider DELMIA, a Dassault Systemes company , has announced it has entered into an academic partnership with Central Michigan University's (CMU) College of Extended Learning.
    Under the terms of the agreement, CMU has purchased DELMIA's DPM Assembly product with the Human Solutions option at a discount for use in its Vehicle Design Program.
    Central Michigan University's Vehicle Design Program in metro Detroit is the only one of its kind in the country. Created by the School's Industrial Engineering Technology Department, in conjunction with automotive design leaders, the bachelor's degree program with a major in vehicle design was developed to provide the automotive industry with the highly-skilled designers and engineers it needs to compete in today's global economy. The 600 students currently enrolled in the undergraduate program, and the 75 students in the new master's degree program, are largely employees of automotive OEMS and Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers. Central Michigan ensures that the curriculum it follows meets current industry needs and the latest standards by working closely with area corporations and leading professional societies.
    "Being competitive in the 21st century is all about using our technical expertise to its fullest advantage," says James Jelnicki, faculty director of the program. "Designers of the future will rely heavily on virtual reality, and our goal is to expose them to the best practices available. DELMIA's DPM Assembly provides an important collaborative environment between designer and engineer for validating a vehicle before it is built. The common V5 platform of the DELMIA and CATIA programs provides seamless compatibility between design and manufacturing. An added bonus is that DELMIA also works with other CAD systems, which is key."
    DPM Assembly is an assembly process planning and verification solution that enables the automotive designer to display how assembly components fit together to see if there are any interferences. It incorporates a single, unified interface for pre-planning, detailed planning, process verification and shop-floor instructions. When applied in a collaborated workflow, DPM Assembly utilizes a single product, process, and resource data model, the PPR Hub(TM), to enable engineers to concurrently communicate best practices and data changes throughout the product lifecycle.
    DELMIA Human solutions, within the DPM environment, provide engineers with human factor tools specifically geared toward understanding and optimizing the relationship between humans and the products they manufacture, install, operate and maintain. DELMIA Human offers user-friendly, advanced ergonomic analysis of the human comfort, safety and performance of detailed manikin-building capabilities for fully articulated, digital humans that reproduce natural movement.
    According to Roy Smolky, academic program coordinator at DELMIA, "Central Michigan was planning to commission the development of its own virtual reality courses until it discovered DELMIA. Instead of reinventing the wheel, it now has a proven package that introduces CAD-design students to leading-edge vehicle development technology, and how it applies to their jobs. In addition, this knowledge directly benefits the performance of the corporations, which is extremely important in this competitive marketplace."
    DELMIA has established academic partnership agreements with a number of institutions in the past year, including the University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, the University of New Orleans, and Purdue University.

    About DELMIA Corp.

    DELMIA Corp. is the leading provider of lean digital manufacturing solutions, focused mainly on software that can be used to streamline manufacturing processes. DELMIA serves industry where optimization of the manufacturing process is critical including automotive, aerospace, fabrication and assembly, electrical and electronics, consumer goods, plant, and shipbuilding.