Providing the toolset to design the cars of the future

Back in 1990 Sir John Harvey Jones visited the Morgan Motor Company in the town of Malvern, Worcestershire, as part of the BBC reality business program Trouble Shooter, where he was surprised to see that the sportscar maker was still making its vehicles in a traditional manner, even continuing to use a large proportion of wood in their construction. Sir John's advice was simple - modernise, greatly increase production and ramp up your prices.

Yet Morgan turned down his advice, the company has since gone from strength to the strength. Today, the cars are still handmade in the Morgan factory and the manufacturer has become a global brand, with a long waiting list for its vehicles. Even the late Sir John admitted that he was pleased that his advice was unheeded.

In the intervening years, however, the cars have become more complex. Customers expect certain levels of quality and there are regulatory requirements for different geographical markets. Whilst the cars themselves are hand built, behind the scenes, Morgan Motors has invested significantly in modern CAD and PLM technology to support the development of their famous model line-up with long-standing partner Design Rule.

Graham Chapman, Engineering Director at Morgan Motors, said: “SmarTeam program has served us well over the past seven years, but in order to take advantage of the broader PLM capabilities we saw that it was time to move up to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform from Dassault Systèmes. We have a young design team so we need to provide them with the modern toolset that they need to develop our cars of the future. We also require an environment where we can collaborate with our partners on new and exciting projects.”

Chapman also commented: “We have been working with Design Rule for approaching eight years. Having delivered our initial SmarTeam implementation they have continued to support us ever since. Their team understands our business in detail and how PLM can best serve it, so we are delighted that we will continue to work together on this business platform upgrade.”

“Morgan Motors is typical of many of our customers in that we have a very long working relationship with them,” explained Bob Hillier, Managing Director for Design Rule. “The project itself is a good example of British industry investing in the latest generation of PLM business solutions to support the development and manufacture of their product, in this case a prestige brand of sports car. We are looking forward to sharing more information about the project as it progresses.”