Marseille 2013: World Capital of the Shark Helmet

At Shark, innovation means design

Saint-Cloud (Paris), 21 June 2013 – Keonys, the leading European distributor and integrator of Dassault Systèmes product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions, announces the signature of a new contract covering product design and conception aspects with Shark Helmets, the renowned French manufacturer of motorcycle helmets.

The helmet is an essential factor in ensuring a motorcyclist’s safety. Shark, having absorbed Bering, Segura and Bagster in 2011, is the third-largest producer of motorcycle equipment in Europe, and has been manufacturing for nearly thirty years off-road, urban, road and racing helmets which are marketed by a network of dealers, with 5,000 sales outlets all over the world.

How to better position the product offer in different segments of the market over the next ten years?

The Marseille-based company, the owner of numerous technical patents, has not been slow to react:

Our industrial challenge is to devise a bold winning strategy based on an increasingly innovative approach to the choice of materials and design for our helmets. With this in mind, we wanted to improve our development methods so as to gain in flexibility and creativity. We had also set ourselves another major challenge, which was how to transfer the technology we develop for the racing environment more quickly to the rest of our product range.

Christophe Fleury, Director of Research and Development at Shark

The technical analysis assignment carried out by Keonys consultants quickly demonstrated the urgent need and relevance of putting in place a better synergy between the conception and design teams.

The deployment of the new ENOVIA collaborative platform at Shark enables the company’s different specialised departments to collaborate effectively and thus to optimise development costs.

Jacques Bacry, Co-President of Keonys.

Communication is not always easy between the easy-going designer with Communication is not always easy between the easy-going designer with his free-hand sketches and the pragmatic, logical engineer.

This new his free-hand sketches and the pragmatic, logical engineer. “This new technology, which integrates data and technical modifications in real time, technology, which integrates data and technical modifications in real time, unquestionably gives us more productive collaboration both between our unquestionably gives us more productive collaboration both between our multi-disciplinary R&D teams, and between our two production plants in multi-disciplinary R&D teams, and between our two production plants in Portugal and in Thailand,” concludes Christophe Fleury. Portugal and in Thailand, concludes Christophe Fleury.