In August 1989, Aries signed an agreement with Ford Motor Company underwhich Ford invested $6 million in the company and agreed to purchase an unspecifiedamount of Aries software products. This turned out to be an important relationship in thatFord had previously established a major technology project, Alpha SimultaneousEngineering. This was a 450-person organization under the leadership of Dr. HowardCrabb6 whose mission was to develop improved products and processes that could betransferred to the rest of the company. Much of their efforts centered around the use ofConceptStation as the conceptual design tool that could help the company significantlyreduce design time as well as create better products.