Ford makes Catia V5 global design and engineering standard for new vehicles

A component of the Catia V5 solution at Ford is the Engineering Hub, which provides a native V5 environment for access and management of Catia V5 within Ford’s C3P NG platform – used across the Ford extended enterprise and its affiliated companies and suppliers. C3P NG is Ford’s product development platform, delivering full digital product capabilities. The Engineering Hub helps it’s design chain globally to streamline development processes and accelerate time-to-market. “The Engineering Hub manages ‘ngineering-owned’ intellectual property gathered during the product life cycle,” says Joel Lemke, CEO of Dassault Systèmes’ Enlovia PLM brand and the company’s global Ford executive. “It provides a consistent information infrastructure, supporting the complex web of inter-relationships that relate individual data components.” Ford has been impressed by Catia’s ability to quickly adapt a design for other vehicles on the same platform – critical to Ford’s goal of reducing product development costs and increasing product quality. Used by Ford since 2003, Catia V5 was first implemented on the Body-in-White development of the Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan and Lincoln Zephyr vehicles, helping Ford reduce its overall digital development time. Use of Catia V5 has expanded into other vehicle programmes and functional areas, including chassis, electrical and interior.