Highlights of the technical work program

In 2023, there was a total of 25 active project groups that involved the participation of over 80 member companies and dealt with various aspects of cross-enterprise collaboration. All members are once again cordially invited to become actively involved in the technical steering committee and the project work.
The technical work program has been reorganized, with each project belonging to a topic-specific cluster.
These are as follows:

Openness: Openness and integration capability are essential for end-to-end digitalization in heterogeneous system landscapes. The prostep ivip Association promotes open PLM systems and is committed to the efficient use of engineering IT standards in systems engineering.

International Standardization: prostep ivip synchronizes the collaboration requirements from different industries, creates the basis for international standards and gives companies a greater degree of independence from their IT systems and suppliers.

Data-Driven Engineering Collaboration: prostep ivip's mission is to improve cross-domain and cross-enterprise collaboration. We make collaboration in product development and production easier by recording user requirements, developing standards and providing recommendations.

Production Collaboration: Heterogeneous IT systems often make cross-enterprise collaboration in production difficult. This is why the prostep ivip Association provides its member companies with support in the context of integrating their digital manufacturing processes.
The Standardization Strategy Board (SSB) is part of the Openness Cluster. The SSB was closely involved in the 2023 Symposium and maintained a high profile there with a well-attended Expert Corner and a workshop. The workshop, which was aimed specifically at vendors, focused on exploring their potential participation in SSB activities. In addition, the SSB works closely with the Code of PLM Openness group to ensure that the providers' perspective is also taken into account with regard to the different fact sheets for engineering IT standards.

Following its successful launch, the Collaborative Digital Twins (CDT) project group began its work in 2023. CDT is part of the Data-Driven Engineering Collaboration cluster and is currently one of the largest projects in prostep ivip. The objective is to define and organize digital twins and coordinate existing activities within the association and beyond. In 2023, focus was placed on establishing the project group and developing user stories for the industrial application of digital twins, in particular in the context of cross-enterprise collaboration. Implementation of the first use cases for a CDT demonstrator is planned for 2024, including the definition of use cases, the development of IT architectures and putting the presentation of CDT to the outside world on a more professional footing.

The Digital Data Package project is also part of the Data-Driven Engineering Collaboration cluster. The DDP, a project group set up by prostep ivip and the VDA, is developing an interlinked data exchange package for model-based collaborative product development with the aim of improving collaboration across domain boundaries. Focus in this context is placed on developing prototypes, expanding the data model and publishing recommendations. The organizational challenges included agile collaboration between user companies and providers as well as persuading the PLM providers that dominate the market to participate in the project. In 2024, the project group plans to increase the maturity level of the data model and the demonstrators, work in close collaboration with other working groups and publish a new release of the recommendation in order to promote standardization of the DDP data model at the OMG, which is supported by the German chapter of Incose (GfSE) and the VDA. The standardization activity will then become part of the International Standardization Cluster.

The Cloud-Based Production Collaboration project is part of the Production Collaboration cluster. The group tackles the challenges faced by manufacturing companies that need to meet the increasing demand for customized products with shorter development cycles while at the same time operating their production systems profitably. The Cloud-Based Production Collaboration (CBPC) project group evaluated the potential of cloud-based IoT platforms for cross-location and cross-enterprise collaboration in production. In 2023, focus was placed on developing and prioritizing collaboration scenarios and evaluating the experience gained and the challenges faced when implementing cloud-based solutions. The most important findings and recommendations have been published in the recommendation CBPC – Challenges and Lessons Learned for Successful Implementations. The organizational and technical challenges involved include data collection and management as well as connecting older machines to cloud-based platforms. In the coming year, the project group plans to hand over its findings and user stories to the Collaborative Digital Twins (CDT) group, incorporate the production-specific aspects in corresponding use cases and scenarios, and bring its work to a close. prostep ivip would like to thank the project chairs, Kai Gleasner and Dr. Nils Macke, for their commitment to the topic. Dr. Nils Macke in particular has actively promoted production-related topics in the association since 2010, when the Digital Manufacturing project was launched. In 2017, he assumed responsibility for managing the Manufacturing Information Model project, which became the Production Lifecycle Information Model (PLIM) in 2018 and has carried the project name Cloud-Based Production Collaboration since 2022.