According to Daratech's independent sources in Japan, Toyota Motor Company's massive deployment of Dassault Systèmes' Catia V5 CAD system may be completed this year, just two years after it began. Though announcement of the deal was made in March 2002 and a few pilot systems were deployed that year, the implementation did not begin in earnest until 2003. With a reported 3500 seats of Catia V5 currently in production at Toyota, there remain only 1500 seats of Toyota's in-house developed TOGO system still to be replaced. Should Toyota succeed in replacing its remaining TOGO seats this year, Toyota's migration to Catia V5 will be the largest and most rapid switchover from one CAD system to another ever achieved by a major automotive OEM.

Of course, there were some teething problems for Toyota, such as having to deal with larger CAD files, as well as data migration issues. However, the major difficulty Toyota faced was retraining its engineers to use the new systems and finding enough operators to man the additional systems it is deploying.

All in all this deployment has gone very smoothly, considering its sheer size and that it went forward without any delays in Toyota's new car model launches. Again, Toyota has proven itself to be an agile, and extraordinarily well-managed manufacturing giant.

Toyota South Africa has implemented Catia V5 as well. This was in order to support the new Toyota Corolla project which will be started this year and for which the entire upper-body has been designed on Catia.

For more information contact Igal Filipovski, CDC, 011 786 3516, igal@cdcza.co.za, www.cdcza.co.za