or our strategic decision. Most of the functions
are self-explanatory, which means that users hardly need more
than 10 minutes of training. Manfred Seiler, Head of
Technical IT, Eurocopter

The French, German, and Spanish Eurocopter Group, formed in
1992 by the merger of the helicopter divisions of Aerospatiale-
Matra and DaimlerChrysler Aerospace, is the worlds leading
manufacturer of civil and military helicopters. Manufacturing,
maintenance services, and related activitiessuch as supplying
airplane manufacturer Airbus with door systems, emergency exits,
and cargo hatchescomprise the companys activities.
Eurocopter, which is a subsidiary of EADS, develops its
helicopters and aircraft components at three locations:
Donauwörth, and Ottobrunn in Germany and Marignane in
France. The company distributes production over six main plants
in France, Germany, and Spain. Eurocopter also supports 16
regional offices and affiliates on all five continents to provide
customer service locally.
Global distribution of development and production, and the
growing trend toward outsourcing development tasks to
international system suppliers represented a major challenge for
the company, according to Manfred Seiler, head of Technical IT
at Eurocopter. The company was outsourcing almost one-third of
all development tasks, and this figure was rising. At the same
time, the company faced growing pressure to reduce development
cycle times and costs.
Eurocopter needed to improve the efficiency of its product
development operations and other business processes. One
possible starting point for improvement was the way in which
Eurocopter communicated computer-aided design (CAD) data
across the company.
Oracle Customer Case Study
Copyright © 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Published October 2007

Key Benefits:
Improved productivity and
efficiency by enabling
employees in various
departments to quickly and
easily view computer-aided
design (CAD) information
Provided user-tailored
functionality and an easy-to-use
visualization system to drive
user acceptance
Enabled the sales staff to show
customers CATIA designs
offsite via mobile access to
designs
Integrated the visualization
solution with the companys
product data management
solution
Saved one man-year as users
from various departments can
now access the CAD data they
need more rapidly and without
support from the designers
Streamlined support and
software updates by providing a
Web-based visualization
solution

Digital product development enables Eurocopter to shorten
development cycles for its helicopters, but it requires powerful
tools to make the digital data accessible to non-CAD departments.
The helicopter manufacturer commissioned a comprehensive
benchmark to select the appropriate visualization solution. Ease-
of-use, the range of supported formats, and Web-based
implementation all led Eurocopter to Oracles AutoVue Electro-
Mechanical Professional (previously known as AutoVue
SolidModel Professional).
Improving Access to CAD Data
In its development and design operations, Eurocopter had
deployed Computer-Aided Three Dimensional Interactive
Application (CATIA) V4 and V5 on 700 UNIX workstations, and
most users still used the old version for their design work.
Colleagues in process planning, production, quality assurance,
and procurement, who generally worked on PCs, were unable to
access the CAD data directly unless they had an expensive UNIX
workstation. Eurocopter installed a few CAD workstations in
production and process planning, but staff members rejected them
because the software was very complicated.
Most departments could only access the Tagged Image File
Format (TIFF) files of the released drawings in the digital archive
if they wished to view or print a drawing. The representation
quality, however, in the standard viewer was inadequate,
particularly when viewing electrical circuit diagrams. Migration
from Windows NT to Windows XP made the information flow
even less satisfactory since the Windows XP viewer could not
render multi-page TIFF documents correctly. The pressure to act
became even greater as the volume of data exchanged with
Eurocopters suppliers grew. In addition, not all of the data was in
the CATIA format. Data recipients at Eurocopter had to convert
the dataan inefficient and time-consuming processand read it
into CATIA, even if they only wished to take a brief glance at a
document.
Eurocopter started searching for a visualization solution that was
easy to use and deploy, selecting AutoVue Electro-Mechanical
Professional.
Oracle Customer Case Study
Copyright © 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Published October 2007
The Web-based solution
is ideal in terms of
support since this means
that new software
versions only have to be
installed once, namely on
the server.
Manfred Seiler
Head of Technical IT
Eurocopter

Ensuring Ease of Use
More than 200 employees in production, process planning, quality
assurance, procurement, and technical sales are using AutoVue
Electro-Mechanical Professional with growing intensity.
Acceptance of the software is very high, and we get many
compliments for our strategic decision, said Manfred Seiler, head
of technical IT, Eurocopter. Most of the functions are self-
explanatory, which means that users hardly need more than 10
minutes of training.
Furthermore, the range of functions available has been tailored to
system users in order to keep operation of the software as simple
as possible. For example, the production staff now has only the
functions they actually need available on their touch screens.
Eurocopter employees primarily use AutoVue Electro-Mechanical
Professional to view CATIA models, but they also view CAD
data in formats such as SolidWorks, initial graphics exchange
specifications (IGES), Verband der Automobilindustrie -
Flächenschnittstelle (VDA-FS), and AutoCAD DWG (drawing)
or DXF (drawing exchange format). Of course, users can view all
the demanding TIFF data from the digital drawings archive and
print it in far better quality than with the standard Windows XP
viewer. The software also supports various Microsoft Office
formats.
A Web-based Solution
One crucial advantage of the AutoVue solution was the option of
implementing the software as a Web-based solution. In
particular, viewers that support a variety of different formats need
to be updated relatively frequently because some change has been
made to the formats, Seiler said. The Web-based solution is
ideal in terms of support since this means that new software
versions only have to be installed once, namely on the server.
Additional AutoVue licenses are also available to users for mobile
use. These licenses can be installed locally on the users
notebooks as standardized packages. Nevertheless, the software is
always updated across the network as soon as the notebook is
connected.
Oracle Customer Case Study
Copyright © 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Published October 2007


Staff from technical sales use these mobile licenses to allow them
to show customers the CATIA models from the design
department. Eurocopter also plans to equip service engineers with
AutoVue Electro-Mechanical Professional so that they can use the
three-dimensional (3D) models to better identify faulty helicopter
components on site.
Integration with Product Data Environment
Today, Eurocopter uses its AutoVue solution in a stand-alone
environment. Users can simply call the Web client and open the
file they wish to view. To allow users to find files more rapidly,
Eurocopter employs a Web-based system that searches all product
data management (PDM) databases over the intranet, extracts the
relevant file and views it in the AutoVue system. The browser-
based solution also offers the option of launching a file download
or making the file available for data exchange with other locations
or external partners directly on the internet via a high-security
server.
The Web-based query system takes account of the PDM
environment at Eurocopter. In addition, the AutoVue system is
directly linked to Eurocopters SAP-based production planning
system. The ease with which it can search across databases
ensures a high level of acceptance among users. Eurocopter also
plans to integrate its AutoVue system directly into its PDM
system as the default viewer to visualize any type of document.
Impact on Bottom Line
While AutoVue certainly delivered tremendous benefits for
Eurocopter, it is difficult to quantify an exact return on
investment. Seiler estimated that Eurocopter possibly saved what
amounts to one man-year as users from various departments can
now access the 3D CAD data they need more rapidly and without
having to request the data from the designers. Eurocopter realized
additional benefits in the dispatch department, where staff are
now using AutoVue to quickly establi