Multi-site engineering development brings competitive advantage to Legrand
1 min read
Electrical installations and data networks specialist Legrand says it expects to improve its ability to innovate and to manage data efficiently as a result of implementing Dassault Systèmes Catia V5 CAD solutions at more than 60 of its sites.
“There is a market frenzy to launch new or updated product ranges more and more frequently, and enormous competition, especially from Asia, so we need new designs and innovative functions to lead the market,” says Daniel Fargeaud, general manager, New Product Marketing and Development, at Legrand’s Wiring Devices Division.
“To drive this innovation we needed to shorten development times from three years to 18 months, and to rationalise the systems of data exchange between the many design offices we had acquired around the world. We have facilitated their collaboration on joint projects through Catia V5.”
The company, which is the result of over 100 acquisitions around the world, already relied on Dassault’s Enovia MatrixOne, PLM (product lifecycle management) and collaborative engineering environment for its data management systems.
Legrand now says that Catia V5 answers all its functional need for design, including of mould tooling and sheet metal, and it also cites the system’s openness with third party applications as an advantage. The company works with the CAA V5 product Q-Checker from Transcat, a diagnostic tool used by the IT support team to validate CAD models.
Beyond that, the collaborative engineering approach enabled by Catia V5 – where a product is designed in one country, developed in another and manufactured in a third – has given Legrand flexibility to optimise use of its dispersed design resources.
