The DELMIA press event and North America user conference that recently concluded in Detroit was an excellent introduction to factory automation software as well as the folks at DELMIA.
CEO Philippe Charles told me over lunch that many DELMIA customers are also CATIA customers, and therefore the company has good penetration among the big aerospace and automotive customers. What about electronics, food and pharmaceutical companies, I ask, thinking of more places that would benefit from automation or modeling of assembly lines and production facilities. Not so much, says Philippe.
Phillipe has a PhD in EE, writing his thesis on signal processing. He is brother to Bernard Charles, CEO of Dassault. What would it be like to have your brother for a boss, I wonder. He spends 40% of his time in Delmia HQ nearby Detroit but home is in France. He doesn't get jet lag.
He asks about the new collaboration tools shown onstage. Clearly, all Dassault is pushing 3DVIA. I tell him the UI (turntable, lack of menu) is clear, child's play even. Philippe is attentive, unhurried, thoughtful. He can make even a journalist feel important. So I venture that although it is nice to be collaborate online, there are time when one is offline and still have to work. For example, managers (an ideal demographic for collaborative tools) may spend a lot of time on airplanes. Could there be a way to keep data locally which would synch up later with online collaborators? I point out that this already being done for documents.
"So we have some work to do," says Philippe with a smile.
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