MAGNA STEYR Reduces Costs and Product Development Time with Agile PLM

Leading automotive supplier uses Agile PLM to standardize and accelerate product development processes

The Agile PLM solution allows MAGNA STEYR to standardize and streamline the development processes of their automotive systems and products, from research and pre-development to mass production. Agile also enables MAGNA STEYR to organize, manage and maintain the integrity of the vast amount of information associated with the design and production of complete vehicles, where individual product structures often contain more than 30,000 items.

The Agile solution is integrated to two of MAGNA STEYR’s existing CAD systems, CATIA and Unigraphics, and partner systems, such as General Motors’ IMAN, in order to leverage design information across the enterprise. In addition, in a cooperative development project with Agile, MAGNA STEYR has implemented a solution to develop conceptual versions of automotive systems during the early part of the product lifecycle, which provides earlier visibility of product information to customers and supply chain partners and ensures a profitable cost structure.

“We were able to deploy Agile’s comprehensive PLM solution rapidly, with high user acceptance rates, which saved us time and costs that we would have incurred developing a custom solution that would have been difficult to maintain,” said Helmut Ritter, Chief Engineer, Information Management, MAGNA STEYR. “With Agile PLM, we were able to reduce overall design time for new vehicles due to improved process and quality efficiencies across multiple departments. We are now anticipating additional reduced cycle times and significant efficiency improvements with new functionality that we co-developed with Agile.”

“MAGNA STEYR is a supplier to some of the best known brands in the automotive industry, and like other automotive suppliers, is constantly under pressure from the OEMs to reduce costs and accelerate cycle times,” said Jay Fulcher, Agile president and COO. “We are pleased that MAGNA STEYR chose to support and standardize their product development processes with Agile. In addition, we are excited about the automotive-specific functionality that we have jointly developed with MAGNA STEYR. Together, we have architected a solution that is beneficial to not only MAGNA STEYR, but to the entire automotive supply chain industry.”

About MAGNA STEYR
MAGNA STEYR is a Group of Magna Int. Inc. With its head office in Toronto, Canada, and 75,000 employees world-wide, over 200 production sites and 48 engineering centers, MAGNA STEYR is among the top ten automotive suppliers in the world. With almost 9,000 employees — by far the largest production site of the MAGNA group — the Graz plant builds six different vehicles for three different clients (BMW, DaimlerChrysler and Saab). MAGNA STEYR plans to produce some 200,000 vehicles in 2004.

About Agile Software Corporation
Agile Software Corporation (NASDAQ: AGIL) helps companies drive profits, accelerate innovation, reduce costs, and ensure regulatory compliance throughout the product lifecycle. With a broad suite of enterprise-class PLM solutions, time-to-value focused implementations, and a unique Guaranteed Business Results program, Agile helps companies get the most from their products.Alcatel, Boeing, Dell Inc., Flextronics International, Haemonetics, Hitachi, Johnson and Johnson, Leapfrog, Lockheed Martin, MAGNA STEYR, Siemens, QUALCOMM and ZF are among the nearly 1200 customers in the automotive, aerospace and defense, consumer products, electronics, high tech, industrial products, and life sciences industries that use Agile solutions. For more information, call 408-284-4000 or visit www.agile.com.