CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

8 November 2004

Implementation Investments

Leading Aerospace & Defense Company Elettronica Selects MatrixOne PLM Environment to Fuel Innovation and Reduce Time to Market

MatrixOne, Inc. announced that Elettronica (ELT), a manufacturer of Electronic Defense equipment and systems headquartered in Rome, Italy, has successfully completed implementation of MatrixOne's PLM platform. The integration of the MatrixOne platform to Elettronica's non-proprietary and sophisticated CAD environment plays a strategic role in Elettronica's ability to offer an array of products, such as electronic and mechanical applications, microwave monitoring and detection tools, and requirements-generating software.

Elettronica chose the MatrixOne PLM platform primarily for its ability to serve as a single product information environment for Elettronica's highly customized and user-specific application frameworks, the core of Elettronica's new product development efforts. Each Elettronica application framework varies greatly based upon the unique needs of product designers, workgroups, and business-level users, with each having the ability to customize its own framework to suit is needs. A secondary benefit realized from the MatrixOne solution arises from the simplicity of information retrieval, allowing for streamlined search and retrieval of product information.

During the initial deployment period, a prototyping stage was followed by phases dedicated to the optimization of BOM (Bill of Materials) management processes and the integration with SAP and the Mentor Graphics-Innoveda CAD application framework. To fully deploy the MatrixOne implementation, integration with Elettronica's CATIA CAD/CAM solution was also completed.

The flexibility of the MatrixOne PLM platform ensured successful application customization based on emerging market trends and the specific needs of the various types of users. In addition, MatrixOne solutions allowed customized support for Elettronica's business users, with specific training activities based on achieved learning levels.

The complexity of Elettronica's BOM management and updating procedures, and the existence of an extensive information database organized by heterogeneous vertical areas required redefinition of the system architecture to help data sharing among different working teams. The added value of the MatrixOne PLM suite increased Elettronica's annual productivity by more than 8 percent, allowing a smoother and more proactive risk evaluation and producing an optimization of the workflow planning tasks.

The document lifecycle has been revolutionized through a simplified coding and management architecture for the data and the specifications of each component listed in the database. Component classes and types have been reduced from sixty-six to twenty-five, and adopted code types have been reduced from seven to two. These revisions of the information system, combined with the adoption of a new packet-based data management system, notably raised the business database's reliability. Moreover, the real-time data sharing capabilities allow for better monitoring and timely resolution of critical problems.

The introduction of digital signatures for project validation and the use of shared documents in electronic format have significantly reduced the printing and management costs of internal archives for each department. In addition to facilitating each project implementation, the new information architecture enables every user to always access the most up-to-date information about BOM modules and reporting activities, thereby shortening product implementation times.

More effective coordination among all the key value chain participants, with a special consideration to partners and suppliers, has sped the digital prototyping and testing of new product models. Research and development and quality management activities benefit greatly from the information system integration and reengineering, allowing Elettronica to speed the time to market of new product models within increasingly demanding industries, such as Aerospace & Defense.

"The implementation of the MatrixOne platform at each stage of the PLM process allowed us to easily migrate from an obsolete, legacy information architecture to a single shared-server system, based on the most innovative relational and object databases," said Sebastiano Perugini, PLM Implementation Project Manager for Elettronica. "The versatility of the MatrixOne application suite enabled optimized sharing of the most complex information, notably speeding product validation times. This allowed us to deliver greater incremental value for both our internal users and external customers as we optimized each stage of the value chain and reduced time to market."

Founded in 1951, the Roma based Elettronica S.p.A (ELT) has been for many years one of the European leaders in the design and production of Electronic Defense equipments and systems. As an historical leader in the defense industry, Elettronica designs and produces equipments and systems for the defense of terrestrial, naval and aerial vehicles. The company key technologies include sensors to intercept and analyze signals (RWR-ESM) and devices for active countermeasures (ECM). Elettronica is headquartered in Roma (Italy), with a German subsidiary (Elettronica GmbH). The company installed base counts more than two thousands of units in the EMEA (Europe Middle East Africa), Pacific and South America regions. For more information, visit http://www.elt-roma.com

 

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