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This year, the symposium was supported by more than 20 virtual exhibitors. The main sponsors were aircraft manufacturer Airbus and PLM manufacturer Dassault Systèmes, who presented their vision of the digital future in the introductory keynotes. One of the megatrends in the aviation industry, in addition to autonomous flying, is the avoidance of pollutant emissions, as Jean-Brice Dumont, Executive Vice President Engineering at Airbus, emphasized. The aircraft manufacturer aims to launch the first zero-emission aircraft powered by hydrogen by 2035.

To shape the zero-emission future, Airbus has launched an ambitious change program for the end-to-end digitization of design, manufacturing and service (DDMS), whose IT foundation is Dassault Systèmes' 3DEXPERIENCE platform. It enables companies to reinvent their products, services and processes and to create disruptive innovations, said Oliver Ribet, executive vice president EMEAR at the PLM vendor.

There is a close connection between product and process innovations, as Thomas Kamla, Senior Director Compliance and Process Management at Volkswagen AG, made clear in his keynote address. The classic tools and methods of product development are not keeping pace with the growing complexity of products, which is why the car manufacturer has decided to implement function-oriented system engineering. However, this paradigm shift also requires developers to rethink and collaborate in a different way, Kamla said.

Volkswagen's keynote was one of numerous presentations that focused on systems engineering. In addition, Digital Twin and Digital Thread were again at the top of the symposium agenda this year. Prof. Dr. Martin Eigner (EIGNER Engineering Consult) explained the basics of the Digital Twin concept to the participants. In essence, he said, it is dictated by the as-built BOM, but then slimmed down and extended in terms of information technology. The concept is not only relevant for the manufacturing industry, but also for logistics companies that want to optimize their customers' supply chains, for example, as Bernd Schwenger (LGI Logistics Group International) explained.

The new symposium concept was very well received by the PLM community: Around 650 participants from all over the world followed the world's largest, manufacturer-independent PLM forum, which this year had the motto "Future Driven by Digital Value Creation". At the start of the virtual event, which was broadcast live from the ICS in Stuttgart, the Executive Board explained how the association intends to position itself in the future in order to provide its members with even greater support in managing the digital transformation. One of the strategic fields of action for digital value creation is software in products, said board member Philipp Wibbing.

The symposium traditionally serves to inform the members of the association about the progress of the various standardization projects. The participants in the DPDA project, which deals with data preparation for data analysis and AI, have developed a uniform process model for this purpose and defined corresponding use cases together with Daimler and Airbus in order to test the model. The DDP (Digital Data Package) working group is working on a metastandard for the exchange of configured and linked engineering data that makes it possible to maintain digital continuity (digital thread) across company boundaries.

The association's board of directors hopes that the prostep ivip Symposium 2022 can again be held as a presence event. However, the digital platform for the provision of on-demand content is to be retained. "Even if networking was a bit lacking, the positive feedback from the participants shows us that this year's symposium was worthwhile for them," sums up Managing Director Alain Pfouga.