Fifth Annual European CATIA Forum to be Held in Berlin October 16-18.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 24, 2001

2500 Participants Expected At Europe's Largest PLM Forum

Hosted by IBM and Dassault Systemes 

IBM and Dassault Systemes announced today that the fifth annual European CATIA Forum will be held from 16-18 October at the new Estrel convention center in Berlin, Germany. With more than 2,000 participants expected to attend, ECF is the main European rendez-vous for Product Lifecycle (PLM) Solution users and Dassault Systemes and IBM business partners.

The ECF is a two-day event of high-value plenary and product sessions, user case studies, demonstrations, workshops, hands-on training and a technifair, all focused on helping customers become more competitive. Top executives from both companies, including Bernard Charles, president of Dassault Systemes, and Ed Petrozelli, general manager, IBM Product Lifecycle Management, will share their vision and strategy for building the digital enterprise. Sessions will cover key industry issues, including industry design, collaboration and integration with supply chain management and the latest product evolutions.

"This year's ECF will showcase the most advanced PLM solutions in 3d available to manufacturing companies" said Bernard Charles, President, Dassault Systemes. "At the ECF, customers will have the opportunity to meet with key teams from Dassault Systemes and IBM and learn about the innovations being made today around 3d PLM to make their companies the leaders of tomorrow."

Industry leaders from throughout Europe representing both the corporate and small-medium enterprise groups will describe how they are deploying Product Lifecycle Management solutions in a wide range of industries and applications. They will show examples of their processes through the use of Dassault Systemes and IBM PLM products. This year's keynote speaker will be Mr Bernard Meyer, CEO of Merywerft Shipbuilding. His presentation will be based on how shipbuilding is driving major contributions to PLM solution efficiency.

Henri Evain, project director, Volvo Information Technology, who attended last year's ECF commented, " These presentations are extremely interesting for companies like Volvo I.T. and Renault V.I. To see how total integration of information throughout the lifecycle of a product from design, through manufacture and distribution, and eventually even to end customers and future web-linked service providers gives us new ideas on how we can improve our own processes."

Dassault Systemes experts, developers and product managers will discuss the latest about PLM solutions, implementation processes and best practices. Solutions workshops will be led by Dassault Systemes and IBM application specialists to present the most effective methodologies to optimize the use of their PLM solutions. Business partners will also be present to show their latest complementary solutions and equipment.

There will be a hands-on CATIA V5 session allowing attendees to design a real-world product themselves and, for the first time, a 4-hour in-depth training session, entitled "ECF Academy," will be held for PLM application users to learn advanced functionalities and increase their productivity.

A Gala Dinner will take place the second evening of the forum, Wednesday, October 17th, to celebrate the longstanding partnership between Dassault Systemes and IBM. Said Ed Petrozelli, general manager, Product Lifecycle Management, IBM, "We have the stability and track record of a proven 20-year relationship with Dassault Systemes. Every year, we show our customers at the ECF what our two companies can do to benefit their organizations through the best Product Lifecycle Management solutions on the market. The ECF is a wonderful opportunity to share ideas and receive feedback in order to continually improve our portfolio of products to meet our customers' needs."

IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM Sales & Distribution, which supports more than a dozen key industries worldwide, works with companies of all sizes around the world to deploy the full range of IBM technologies. The fastest way to get more information about IBM is through the IBM home page at http://www.ibm.com

Dassault Systemes (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) is the premier global software developer for the CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM market, providing companies with e-business solutions to implement their digital enterprise, thus creating and simulating the entire product life cycle from initial concept to product in service. CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA solutions support industry-specific business processes to help unleash creativity and innovation, reduce development cycle time, improve quality, competitiveness and shareholder value: CATIA supports the digital product definition and simulation, DELMIA provides solutions to define and simulate lean digital manufacturing processes and ENOVIA delivers enterprise solutions that manage a comprehensive, collaborative and distributed model of the digital product, processes and resources. The combined integration creates the Digital Product life cycle Pipeline, supporting reuse of corporate knowledge. SolidWorks and SmarTeam, as Dassault Systemes companies, offer respectively 3D design-centric and collaborative PDM software solutions based on Windows and the internet. Spatial, also part of Dassault Systemes family, is a market-leading provider of world-class 3D software components and services (for 3D modeling, visualization, and interoperability) to meet the requirements of 3D in Internet-based e-commerce and B2B applications. Information about Dassault Systemes is available at http://www.dsweb.com.