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Dassault Sidebar: 3-D and the Environment

Michel Setboun

Bruno Delahaye, the company’s vice president for ENOVIA market strategy, in a 3-D virtual reality room

Not so long ago, the environmental impact of products and processes took low priority in corporate strategies for growth. Now it is a fundamental consideration. Dassault Systèmes (NYSE Euronext: DSY), for one, is plunging ever deeper into the area of eco-sustainability, via a growing portfolio of 3-D tools.

Bruno Delahaye, the company’s vice president for ENOVIA market strategy, says it all began with compliance. “Customers were saying: ‘Help me comply so I can do my business.’ They didn’t want to be the last, but they didn’t necessarily want to be the first either.”

Dassault Systèmes came up with a suite of compliance products — ENOVIA Materials Compliance Central — that was much more than a checklist, as compliance also meant certifying suppliers and tracking regulatory change. But even this wasn’t enough. As Delahaye recalls, “Customers then started to ask for a competitive advantage.”

Last year, Delahaye says, Dassault Systèmes responded with SustainabilityXpress, an interactive tool embedded in SolidWorks that measures the environmental impact of a product from manufacture to use to disposal, “so a designer has a feel for the environmental impact of what he is doing. As you design, it tells you, ‘What if?’ ”

Dassault Systèmes’ sustainability efforts are now spinning out in countless directions. Delahaye cites the apparel industry’s need for new criteria for selecting suppliers in terms of eco-sustainability, as well as the company’s burgeoning involvement in sustainable cities. Dassault Systèmes is now beginning to develop 3-D software that will translate information from urban systems into usable tools for planners. It took its first steps with increasingly unmanageable Mexico City.

Delahaye describes working to create a large, collaborative platform to manage the flood of data necessary to build a complex picture of the Mexican capital. He speaks of developing “a system of systems, algorithms that help data from disparate systems interact. You look at employment rates, which leads to income levels, which translates into the number of cars bought and what kind.” In short, he says, it is about “creating a SimCity, but for real.”