Liebherr Aerospace to migrate to IBM PLM

Global aerospace supplier Liebherr Group’s Aerospace division is to implement product lifecycle management (PLM) systems company-wide under a multi-million euro, 700 licence, three-year deal with IBM and Dassault Systèmes. This is the latest in a string of similar contracts for IBM and Dassault – others in 2003 including Enaer, Heroux-Devtec, AVIC-1 and Shaanxi Aircraft Industry. It seems their push with industry-specific tools and considerable development with the V5 PLM platform and marketing is paying off. In fact, IBM PLM Solutions with Dassault’s SmarTeam collaborative PLM system will be at the forefront of supporting Liebherr Aerospace’s push to accelerate time-to-market, improve and sustain product quality and grow the company in the changing and increasingly outsource-orientated aerospace market. Liebherr provides many of the world’s major aircraft manufacturers with aircraft control, hydraulic, landing gear, air conditioning and ventilation systems. The firm says its implementation of SmarTeam will enable it to optimise management of everything from specifications to engineering rules, operational parameters, simulation results and customer-related product design data. It will support collaboration and information sharing between both of its European production centres and with its customers world-wide. Liebherr cites the on-demand capacity of SmarTeam as among reasons for the migration. IBM Business Consulting Services PLM practice is to provide consulting, project management and implementation and support services to help Liebherr redefine product development methodologies and achieve the improvements it’s looking for through productivity gains and cost reduction. “In complex projects, combining information technology tools and industry best practices with aerospace processes requirements calls for reliable, sustainable and proven partners,” says Andre Benhamou, managing director, Liebherr Aerospace Toulouse. “IBM, supported by Dassault Systèmes, meets this partnership qualification because it is a truly global player that ensures an internationally harmonised and controlled delivery of Business Consulting Services and PLM Solutions to European organisations.” “SmarTeam will bring value to Liebherr by enabling it to establish business compliance with its OEM customers, better structured and organised product data, streamline methods and processes, and collaborate securely with partners,” says Avinoam Nowogrodski, CEO, SmarTeam.