Dassault Systèmes, a leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions and Intercim, a leader in manufacturing and production operations management software solutions for advanced and highly regulated industries, announced a new step forward in their strategic alliance, with Dassault Systèmes taking a minority position in Intercim.

The announcement illustrates Dassault Systèmes and Intercim’s commitment to bringing the real world of Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) into the virtual world of PLM. The partners will provide a dynamic, real-time ability to execute production orders exactly as planned by manufacturing engineers and close the loop between engineering and the shop floor. Dassault Systèmes’ investment in Intercim, a partner since 2004, follows a June 2008 Memorandum of Understanding to provide the aerospace and defense industry with Intercim’s manufacturing operations management solution integrated with Dassault Systèmes’ V6 platform.

This investment strengthens the currently available joint Dassault Systèmes – Intercim V5 solution around 3D process planning and manufacturing execution. It also accelerates the development of a new V6 production experience that combines the values of MES and PLM, revolutionizing the sharing of intellectual property between engineering, manufacturing planning and production communities. The companies will create real-time collaboration on product and production lifecycle data in a single online referential between the different communities in the manufacturing supply network, such as design engineering, manufacturing engineering, shop floor, and quality management. They will enforce engineering-driven production execution on the shop floor, as designed and as planned, increase visibility and traceability for all manufacturing stakeholders of shop floor execution with real-time 3D access to the “as-built” product, process and resource information, and enable immediate impact analysis and validation of corrective actions in the virtual model before committing to cost intensive implementations.

“Because of the trends we see in aerospace and defense, like global sourcing, physical separation of design and manufacturing activities, and engineering specialization, it is critical that information exchange and collaboration between engineering, manufacturing and the supply network be handled in real-time,” said John Todd, Intercim president and CEO. “The combination of Intercim’s proven execution and manufacturing intelligence capabilities with the virtual experience provided by Dassault Systèmes’ solutions allows this type of collaboration and knowledge sharing for the first time.”

The future of production communities requires the power of PLM 2.0’s lifelike experience incorporating shop floor “as-built” information, product and quality analytics, and manufacturing best practices. Dassault Systèmes and Intercim’s joint vision enables such an expanded PLM 2.0 strategy, which includes the shop floor and supply network’s real-time production state.