Mentor Graphics Expands Product Family for the Wire Harness Industry.

Business Editors, Hi-Tech Writers

MANCHESTER, United Kingdom--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 27, 2002

Mentor Graphics Corporation (Nasdaq:MENT) today announced the availability of the Capital Manufacture(TM) and Capital Factory software product suites, the first in its next-generation family of products for the design, engineering and manufacture of electrical wire harnesses, Capital Harness Systems (CHS).

Mentor Graphics conceived CHS in collaboration with leading automotive and aerospace OEMs and their suppliers to address the wire harness design requirements of the automotive and aerospace industries. Capital Manufacture and Capital Factory are available immediately. Mentor Graphics will introduce additional products in the CHS family over the next 18 months.

"Many OEMs and suppliers in the automotive and aerospace industries are using internally-developed applications to manage an extremely complex wire harness design process. Instead of concentrating on building their core products, these companies are finding themselves maintaining software that has to continually grow in scope," said Martin O'Brien, general manager, harness systems business unit, Mentor Graphics. "With Capital Harness Systems tools, Mentor will provide the industry with data-centric solutions to address all aspects of the harness flow for the first time."

As electronic content in cars has grown, the number and complexity of electrical circuits has also compounded. Modern aircraft may have more than 150 kilometers of wires interconnecting a myriad of electronic systems. As electrical design data grows, additional business issues affecting the automotive and aerospace industries are also impacting the wire harness design process. For example, the growing use of third-party outsourcing requires data sharing up and down the supply chain throughout the design process and product lifecycle. Global competition is also driving the need for speeding time-to-market and reducing manufacturing costs through design efficiencies.

CHS expands on the strengths of the CAPITAL H(TM) tool, the wire harness design for manufacture product that Mentor Graphics gained through the acquisition of Harness Software Group in October 2000, to offer an integrated flow for the creation of complex electrical wire harnesses. Logical Cable(TM), Mentor's existing family of tools for the logical design of wire harnesses, is also included in CHS and will be further enhanced in future releases. The CHS family addresses the issues facing the automotive and aerospace industries today, providing a complete flow of tools to handle the complexity more efficiently. Built on a component-based data model and electrical database, CHS facilitates information sharing throughout the enterprise and its entire supply chain.

Capital Manufacture

Capital Manufacture is a set of software tools that enables the design and engineering of wire harnesses for manufacture. Capital Engineer allows users to build and validate harness designs and produce full manufacturing bill-of-materials. Capital Engineer supports complex wire harness configurations, including options, variants and modules. The suite also includes Capital Costing, offering sophisticated and comprehensive reporting, analysis and costing features that allow users to generate accurate labor and material cost estimates. Capital Manufacture's Design System Interface (DSI) allows data to be imported from other electrical computer aided design (ECAD) and mechanical computer aided design (MCAD) systems, giving users maximum flexibility and data re-use options.

Capital Factory

Capital Factory facilitates the fabrication and production of complex wire harnesses. Capital Formboard, the first product in the Capital Factory suite, automates the creation of wire harness formboard drawings, onto which the wire harness is assembled. Capital Formboard automates the often difficult and time-consuming creation of production formboards, generating outputs based on the harness representation in Capital Manufacture. As design changes are made, Capital Formboard compares the new version to the preceding harness definition, and re-uses as much of the existing definition as possible, allowing the user to update only the areas that have changed. Capital Formboard consolidates designs, giving users the option to manage several harnesses from a single formboard drawing, making the process more efficient.

About Capital Harness Systems

CHS is designed as a complete, end-to-end tool set for complex wire harness creation, with tools to automate the design, analysis and manufacture. The Capital Manager(TM) relational database is at the heart of CHS, storing and managing all design data. CHS applications write to and access data directly from this common repository.

About Mentor Graphics

Mentor Graphics Corporation (Nasdaq:MENT) is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products, consulting services and award-winning support for the world's most successful electronics and semiconductor companies. Established in 1981, the company reported revenues over the last 12 months of more than $600 million and employs approximately 3,100 people worldwide. Corporate headquarters are located at 8005 S.W. Boeckman Road, Wilsonville, Oregon 97070-7777; Silicon Valley headquarters are located at 1001 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, California 95131-2314. World Wide Web site: www.mentor.com.

Mentor Graphics is a registered trademark of Mentor Graphics Corporation. CAPITAL H, Logical Cable, Capital Harness Systems, Capital Manufacture and Capital Manager are trademarks of Mentor Graphics Corporation. All other company or product names are the registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners.