ESI Group, pioneer and world-leading solution provider in virtual prototyping for manufacturing industries, launches a cooperation with Herrenknecht AG. World market leader for tunnel boring machines, Herrenknecht is adopting ESI's IC.IDOVirtual Reality solution as a basis for collaborative decision-making. The main objective of Herrenknecht is to enable the many stakeholders in a development project to visualize their product from the earliest stages of its development, life-size and in real-time, so that machine designs can be validated faster.

Herrenknecht engineers performing a design review using IC.IDO (Photo: Herrenknecht AG)

Herrenknecht engineers performing a design review using IC.IDO (Photo: Herrenknecht AG)

By adopting IC.IDO, Herrenknecht joins leading-edge manufacturers from the automotive, aeronautic and other industry sectors. John Deere, Jaguar Land Rover, BMW, Ford, Boeing, Jungheinrich, Rheinmetall, Optima Packaging and Trumpf are among the companies who now see a striking advantage in implementing Virtual Reality to spur innovation.

"Leveraging ESI's leading Virtual Reality technology significantly helps us optimize our development processes. IC.IDO enables us to modify processes and developments collaboratively with our customers, with the common objective to improve on performance, enhance quality and decrease development time," says Gebhard Lehmann, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Management, of Herrenknecht AG.

Herrenknecht uses Virtual Reality to perform ergonomics studies and complete security assessments, visibility and reachability studies, real-time simulations of wires and hoses, and assembly/disassembly analyses.

Using IC.IDO's ergonomic and intuitive software environment, sales, marketing and technical staff from Herrenknecht can share models with their clients' decision makers and influencers - communicating naturally with executives, engineers and operators; assuring a common understanding of current and future products and avoiding the misunderstandings and misinterpretations often encountered when relying on drawings and scale models. Thanks to IC.IDO, the distributed players in a project are able to use a shared 3D model as a platform for real-time reviews, enabling constant communication and faster iterations from the earliest stages in the product development process.

Massive amounts of 3D data from different sources (including Herrenknecht, their clients and subcontractors) can be loaded rapidly into one environment, facilitating regular updates and assuring that teams are always current with the latest design progressions. By making the right decisions at the right time, Herrenknecht reduces lead times and product development costs.

Further encouraging the adoption of Virtual Reality, Herrenknecht should benefit from the existence of a readily available pool of young experts from the neighboring Offenburg College, where a similar IC.IDO Virtual Reality set-up has been installed. Local engineering students are indeed taught to master Virtual Reality technology with the objective that they can contribute to its adoption in diverse applications in the future.

About Herrenknecht

As the only company worldwide, Herrenknecht AG delivers tunnel boring machines for all ground conditions and in all diameters - ranging from 0.10 to 19 meters. The Herrenknecht product range includes tailor-made machines for transport tunnels, supply and disposal tunnels and additional equipment and service packages. Furthermore, Herrenknecht manufactures drilling rigs for vertical and inclined shafts as well as deep drilling rigs. In the year 2011, the Herrenknecht Group achieved a total operating performance of 1,104 million euros. Since the formation of the company in 1977, Herrenknecht machines have excavated a total of around 2,300 kilometers of tunnel in the large diameter range of more than 4.20 meters. Around 850 Herrenknecht Utility Tunneling Machines are in operation around the world constructing or installing water and sewage systems, gas and oil pipelines, as well as conduits for electricity, the Internet and telephone lines. The Herrenknecht Group employs around 5,000 members of staff worldwide, among them 200 trainees. With 77 subsidiaries and associated companies working in related fields in Germany and abroad, Herrenknecht provides a comprehensive range of services close to the respective project and customer.

About ESI Group

ESI is a pioneer and world-leading provider in Virtual Prototyping that takes into account the physics of materials. For more info, please visit www.esi-group.com/

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ESI Group ? Media Relations
Céline Gallerne
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