IT standards are essential for cross-enterprise systems engineering, but which standards are best suited for this purpose? This is the question being addressed by the Standardization Strategy Board (SSB), a joint project group organized by the prostep ivip Association and the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA). The project group was established in 2016 with the aim of enabling cross-enterprise systems engineering (collaborative systems engineering, or CSE) based on engineering IT standards.
The project group continuously analyzes the IT standards relevant to systems engineering, prioritizes them and evaluates their level of maturity level in order to derive common strategies and recommendations for their implementation and use. The objective is to achieve end-to-end coverage of the business objects and interfaces required in CSE processes using corresponding standards, with the aim of making the vision of a digital twin reality. The SSB also addresses future-oriented trends in product development and the resulting cross-enterprise challenges involved and passes them on to the relevant committees and specialist groups.
A key focus of work performed by the project group in 2023 was stepping up collaboration with the IT vendors and closer coordination with activities performed in the CPO project group. To this end, a discussion with a panel of experts and a workshop, in which users and IT vendors were able to discuss market relevance and support for standards in the vendors' software products, were held as part of the prostep ivip Symposium, A joint workshop was held in October 2023 together with interested IT vendors as a follow-up activity and was very well received. Views on standardization in general and support for standards in specific software products in particular were discussed and measures for improvement proposed.
One highlight in 2023 was the publication of the white paper on "Future IT Architectures in Engineering". It discusses state-of-the art IT technologies and presents solutions for the PLM IT architecture of the future based on the current impact of product development. IT technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and neural networks, semantic networks and ontologies as well as the openness and standardization of data and interfaces, among other things, are addressed.
In the second half of the year, a topic regarding the maturity levels of virtual prototypes was taken up, which, unlike the maturity levels of hardware prototypes and the familiar A samples, B samples etc., have yet to be standardized to any great degree. There is a need for standardization here to ensure that it is possible to document requirements and expectations with regard to the maturity level of engineering data in cross-company collaboration.
There were two organizational challenges that needed to be addressed in 2023. Firstly, the SSB opened the group up to IT vendors and organized a hybrid workshop in October, in which IT vendors participated at times. This type of workshop proved to be a very good experience and it is intended that this form of collaboration be continued in 2024. Worthy of note is the fact that the SSB was able to recruit Olaf Kramer from BOSCH to join Sebastian Handschuh from Mercedes-Benz as project manager from January 2024.
In 2024, the SSB will once again focus on new topics such as organization/standards landscape, sustainability, material and substance management and standards for describing virtual environments. In addition, collaboration with IT vendors will continue and a survey on users' expectations with regard to support for standards, the work performed by the SSB and collaboration with the CPO initiative will be conducted. The creation, maintenance and publication of fact sheets will continue in 2024. The SSB would also like to promote collaboration between the prostep ivip Association and other projects dealing with the topic ontology.
"The SSB has established itself as a body whose composition remains largely unchanged and is comprised of highly committed participants. We are pleased that we have now also been able to launch collaboration with the IT vendors, with the aim of taking further steps towards implementing standards in the software products."
"We are looking forward to the results of the work performed by the relatively young Collaborative Digital Twins project group this year and are eager to see what requirements with regard to future collaboration will emerge at a professional, technical and organizational level. We will of course also continue our close cooperation with other projects in the prostep ivip Association, like the CPO, and continue and further expand collaboration with IT vendors. Our clear objective is to continue to drive the use of data standards by both users and software vendors forward."
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