This agreement was based on the success of Valor's installations in the US and Japanese operations of Hitachi and provides a common format for these divisions to communicate and share global design and manufacturing data.

Commenting on the deployment of the Valor solutions, Mr Loubat, project engineer at Hitachi, said, "Valor already supplies software to other divisions within the Hitachi Group and their manufacturing software systems have delivered significant productivity gains across manufacturing operations - so they were a perfect choice. Since the implementation we have seen our processing time for machine programs reduced by 50%."

Hitachi needed to replace their existing machine programming system with a more stable solution backed by excellence in customer support, but wanted to continue using their existing machine library data with the new system, therefore requiring an integrated approach. Valor's software automation capabilities fulfilled the required specification providing flexibility and compatibility as well as being supported by a large team with in-depth industry expertise.

"Trilogy 5000 delivers full integration with all other software, retaining all the CAD data with integrity maintained. Their advanced scripting capabilities are very powerful and have allowed for a seamless integration," added Mr Loubat.

"We were experiencing problems generating accurate 3D models and mechanical drawings of the PCA to produce tools such as carrier walls, used to cover reflowed soldered SMD parts during wave soldering. Now the Valor Parts Library provides us with the required accurate, up-to-date information that eliminates this problem, allowing us to generate accurate 3D tools and mechanical drawings for optimized flow soldering," said Mr Loubat about the VPL product.

"Facing shrinking product lifecycles, Valor has provided Hitachi with a solution using intelligent ODB++ data to improve operational and process efficiencies, and minimize down time," said David Bengal, president of Valor Europe. "Hitachi has been pleased with the implementation of our systems and anticipates a return on investment that will be significantly shorter than the expected two years."

The Valor Parts Library is an online data service covering over 36 million accurate component geometries, enhancing DFM verification, component placement and PCB pre-production, providing the most accurate part and package data in an interactive, dynamic format. The VPL is the only parts library that allows users to extract the information needed for accurate cross-correlation of customer provided parts information and vendor information.