Recycling Innovation

UGS Corp., a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services, today announced it has acquired the technology for a new product
that is creating significant business value for the global manufacturing industry by revolutionizing the part reuse process.
UGS acquired the technology from software design & management AG (sd&m), a leading software and consultancy firm in Germany.
UGS made the announcement today in conjunction with its annual industry analyst conference in New York. (See separate UGS announcements from today.)
The UGS offering, which has been named Geolus(R) Search, is in production use today and was formerly sold as geolus SHAPE.
It is a “shape search” application which allows manufacturers to quickly locate 3D models of digitally defined parts from large heterogeneous data sources on the basis of geometric similarity.
The technology earned sd&m the “Innovator of the Year, 2004” award from CADCAM magazine and its acquisition paves the way for UGS to build advanced geometry-based search applications that promote innovation through reuse and eliminate the time and expense associated with designing or purchasing duplicate parts.
“DaimlerChrysler Commercial Vehicles has used this product for the past three years as a way to enhance product design and avoid costs associated with creating duplicate or similar parts,” said Ulrich Salzer, Director IT Commercial Vehicles Development, DaimlerChrysler.
“Duplicate part development can now be detected early enough to leverage [our part usage]optimization potential, particularly between our global development sites in Europe, Japan and the Americas. Furthermore, using this product in our
target price controlling [initiative] also helps us to achieve significant annual savings.”
UGS is a global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services with nearly 4 million licensed seats and 46,000 customers worldwide.
Headquartered in Plano, Texas, UGS’ vision is to enable a world where organizations and their partners collaborate through global innovation networks to deliver world-class products and services while leveraging UGS’ open enterprise solutions, fulfilling the mission of enabling them to transform their process of innovation.