Making planes, especially military planes and the weapons associated with them, is about the sexiest job for an engineer. I know, it's sad. Still, this is an engineering fact of life not wasted on PR professionals who will take every opportunity to highlight their clients role in the creation of the latest and greatest technology in the sky.
Boeing’s JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) Program migrated product data from multiple legacy systems to Teamcenter, says UGS. (artist concept supplied by Boeing)
Boeing, being the biggest aircraft manufacture in the US if not the world, is tracked very closely. It wasn't long after we ran the story "Boeing Selects UGS Teamcenter for Future Projects" that we got an email from Dassault's PR agency that begged to differ -- and made the following points:
- this is not a new contract (not a win by UGS)
- UGS footprint at Boeing is actually decreasing, all UGS CAD-based programs migrating to Dassaults’ CATIA-ENOVIA technology
- contrary to what the UGS press release says, only legacy data management is affected
Dassault gets a lot of mileage out of Boeing being perceived as a CATIA house, so I can understand them being miffed at UGS trying to steal the spotlight. But it was the last point that concerned us the most as Dassault (through their PR agency) pretty much calls UGS a liar.
In an apparent attempt to address the fallout from their original release, UGS answers with a Daratech report in which analyst Monica Schnitger points out that Boeing started using SDRC's Metaphase (which turned into TeamCenter after UGS acquired SDRC) since 2000. Also, Schnitger confirms that UGS TeamCenter will "form the data management backbone for all future programs at Boeing..."
This was confirmed by Jeffrey Rowe of MCAD Weekly, who stated, "Boeing chose Teamcenter as its enterprise-level data manager for all new programs going forward."
Now who's a liar?