Dassault Systèmes’ Additive Manufacturing Symposium was held May 15th, 2017 at The McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, Il. At the symposium, Dassault Systèmes demonstrated their 3DEXPERIENCE suite of connected AM applications: BIOVIA, CATIA, SIMULIA, and DELMIA which illustrated what’s available today to help customers design and make AM parts. Customers can choose whether to adopt incrementally, as point solutions, or holistically to provide an end-to-end platform for designing, simulating, and making AM production ready parts.

In CIMdata’s opinion, with the capabilities of BIOVIA, GEOVIA, and SIMULIA on a common platform, Dassault Systèmes continues to display a compelling vision of how science can and will enable sustainable innovation. The major challenge CIMdata sees going forward is how to gain the momentum needed to apply cultural change to make full use of the technology which is already available.

Participants from industry, government, and academia, as well as solution providers, attended the recent CIMdata Simulation Driven Systems Development (SDSD) Knowledge Council Workshop held at the UI Labs/Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) facilities in Chicago, IL on June 6 and 7, 2017. This annual CIMdata Knowledge Council Workshop was focused on the technical challenges, business opportunities, and implementation strategies for industry to define and achieve best practices for simulation-driven systems development within the context of the rapid digitalization of global enterprises.

CIMdata attended PTC’s LiveWorx 2017, held in Boston May 23 through 25. The event was staged under the banner “Shaping the Future of Business.” LiveWorx 2017 showcased strong ongoing growth, as more and more companies are adapting IoT into their connected products and systems. PTC clearly described and showed how they have assembled a solution platform that can create and operate smart, connected products. PTC recognized this trend early, made investments, and the market is now seeing the impressive results. CIMdata believes that PTC will remain at the forefront of the IoT tidal wave with its already broad IoT-focused product suite and continued investment in this area. They are effectively integrating these solutions with their other PLM-related product suites and delivering a broad, technology-rich platform to help their customers create the solutions of the future.

Successfully implementing PLM in retail, footwear, and apparel firms (RFA) requires deep industry experience and process knowledge, and access to the levers of power in the executive suite of RFA firms. Accenture offers access to the latest PLM technology, a deep bench of savvy RFA professionals, and a long history of successful PLM implementations.

Dassault Systèmes’ DESIGN In the Age of Experience event, held in Milan, Italy during its world famous Design Week, was inspiring and showcased a significant number of their clients and how they are using Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform to change the way they innovate and design. This event was organized around Dassault Systèmes’ four pillars of design in the age of experience: Designing Experience, Design is The Business Plan, Design is Tribes, and Design is Science Driven, each of which were expanded on throughout the event. This provided a well-thought out and delivered set of messages that brought practical examples on how leading organizations in multiple industries are changing the way they design and supporting their change with Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

The Aras ACE 2017 conference was exciting. Aras has a swagger based on their growth and recent big wins in the PLM industry. While originally dismissive, their competition is starting to pay attention to Aras, and CIMdata is receiving a lot of inquiries about what Aras is doing, both from competitors and industrial companies. As it grows its customer base and scope of its solutions, Aras will have its work cut out for it to maintain its competitive position.

CIMdata recently attended Dassault Systèmes SIMULIA’s analyst event at its headquarters in Johnston, RI. SIMULIA has developed a leading simulation solution portfolio that when deployed within the framework of a product innovation platform enables model-based systems engineering capabilities for their customers. CIMdata believes that the company has made strong moves towards providing a process and management foundation and apps-based execution technology that can help their customers achieve sustainable innovation.

CIMdata has looked at Wipro’s M&A related PLM advisory and implementation capability. Consequently, we feel that Wipro has developed a systematic playbook, a broad set of system of integration frameworks, a robust governance model, and a PLM maturity model to guide companies in realistically predicting and realizing PLM related value in M&As. CIMdata has also studied post-merger PLM integrations and concludes that Wipro should be considered as a PLM harmonization partner for realizing the long-term business transformation which may be expected from a merger or an acquisition.

CIMdata is impressed with Altair’s product strategy for enabling systems simulation up front in the product development process to drive innovative product design concepts and by Altair’s execution in developing a comprehensive portfolio of multi-physics solvers integrated with Altair’s world-class optimization capabilities. The bottom line is that Altair has grown into a multi-physics systems modeling and simulation platform provider that can compete toe-to-toe with the major PLM market leaders and has the potential to be a disruptive force in their targeted industry segments.