INDUSTRY

GS Corp., a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services, today announced the release of Tecnomatix Version 7.6 software, the latest version of its comprehensive digital manufacturing software portfolio. Tecnomatix 7.6 includes new capabilities that facilitate the definition and optimization of common workflow processes typical to many manufacturing organizations, while automating time consuming tasks that serve to boost manufacturing engineering productivity in process design and validation. The latest release also includes a variety of enhancements to further improve ease-of-use. UGS also announced today in a separate press release that by more tightly integrating Tecnomatix with its Teamcenter PLM software portfolio and creating closer alignment with the UGS PLM Open business model, it has elevated digital manufacturing's impact on PLM and made significant progress in closing the gap between product and process design for the entire global manufacturing industry. "The need for speed-to-market consistently ranks high on the business agendas of most manufacturing executives," said Gisela Wilson, Director of the PLM Solutions analysis at IDC. "By supporting manufacturing industry workflows in its Tecnomatix digital manufacturing portfolio, UGS is creating a virtual 'day-in-the-life' scenario for the manufacturing engineer and addressing the critical manufacturing business objective of accelerating production launch and meeting time-to-market commitments." Industry-leading workflow support cuts production time Enhanced workflow support in Tecnomatix 7.6 is designed to help manufacturing engineers define consistent, unambiguous, error-free processes that are optimized for efficiency. This industry-leading functionality includes support for a variety of common business workflow processes. * A new Robotic Process Simulation offering provides Body-in-White (BIW) users with an ability to accurately simulate and validate complex robotic processes, obtain accurate cycle times and improve the quality of virtual process validation. * A new quoting tool helps suppliers produce fast and accurate responses to RFQs, by reusing best practice processes to select the best quote alternative. * New technical publication capabilities, including a significantly improved user interface, helps customers from all industries produce better process documentation and improve process communication. "Big enterprises like Volkswagen are facing a huge number of parallel, sequential and interlinked business processes. This leads to a large amount of data that is created across all departments and must be managed in a structured way," said Mr. Tino Reichel, leader for the Digital Factory implementation in the Body in White - Planning in VW. "It is important to understand that every minute we can save during production launch on the factory floor can have a dramatic impact on our product's cost and our company's profitability. The challenge in implementing a digital method for supporting business processes is to enable the creativity of our engineers as well as the technical implementation of Digital Manufacturing software. It is a prerequisite to have agreed business processes and corresponding organizational support as a basis for such an implementation. Those digital methods should enable to automate or partially automate time consuming planning tasks that are critical elements in the process chain of our enterprise. The new Tecnomatix Software (Version 7.6) allows us to plan ahead for manufacturing and ramp-up processes, improve collaboration and thereby avoid expensive redundant efforts and mistakes in the manufacturing processes. This contributes to improving our bottom line." Automation and usability improvements boost productivity UGS has focused many of the enhancements in Tecnomatix 7.6 on increasing the productivity of manufacturing engineering by reducing the time required for process design and validation tasks and improving usability. * A new automatic weld point distribution tool assigns, validates and reports on weld point distribution in the process design, replacing a tedious manual process and saving hours of manufacturing engineering efforts. * A process mirroring capability reduces the time necessary to model assembly processes by up to 50 percent. * The automatic path planning capability enables manufacturing engineers to define robotic and/or assembly paths within minutes instead of hours. * A new distributed flow simulation experiment capability significantly reduces time to execute "what if" simulation experiments and optimization. * A wide variety of usability enhancements -- including new color tree indicators, automatic note placement, Windows-like application framework, and interactive parametric report generation -- create a more user-friendly and efficient work environment. "The latest release of Tecnomatix is consistent with UGS' commitment to providing manufacturers worldwide with the software tools that will help them optimize their efficiency and innovation throughout their entire product lifecycle," said Ziyon Amram, vice president, Manufacturing Solutions, UGS. "Through its enhanced support of common business workflow processes and focus on manufacturing engineering productivity, Tecnomatix 7.6 is helping companies transform their process of innovation through world-class digital manufacturing." UGS provides the widest domain coverage with its Tecnomatix digital manufacturing portfolio from part planning all the way through production management and feedback to product design. Tecnomatix is the only digital manufacturing solution of its kind that covers the depth and breadth of digital manufacturing requirements and is used by more industry leaders in more industry verticals than any other comparable digital manufacturing solution. Tecnomatix enables companies to deliver innovative solutions by: * Capturing, managing and leveraging manufacturing process information * Authoring a manufacturing process in an efficient and reusable manner * Validating and optimizing manufacturing processes * Communicating, collaborating and executing manufacturing processes To learn more about Tecnomatix please visit its Web site .