It bundles the interests of manufacturers and suppliers in manufacturing industry as well as IT vendors, in close cooperation with research and science institutes, to provide its members with the long-term competitive advantages that more efficient processes, methods and systems provide.
The association was founded in 1993, when leading IT managers at BMW, Bosch, Continental, Daimler, Delphi, Opel, Siemens, Volkswagen and 30 other companies realized that the development of modern processes for efficient product data management was crucial to ensuring the ability of German companies to compete in the global marketplace.
The starting point for this endeavor was the joint development of the STEP data format (ISO 10303), which was intended to ensure manufacturing industry’s independence from CAD software vendors. Since 2003, integrated virtual product creation (iViP) has been one of the association’s foremost topics and has today been established as an important instrument for shortening the processes leading up to the launch of a product.