PLM Road Map 2016 for the Global Automotive Industry is the must-attend event for automotive industry executives and PLM practitioners; providing independent education and a collaborative networking environment where ideas, trends, experiences, and relationships critical to the automotive industry germinate and take root. Topics should be of interest to OEMs and suppliers.
The automotive industry has gone global. For the most part, competition, suppliers, manufacturing and support operations, and other key business relationships and facilities are distributed around the world. Competition in certain markets continues to heat up, while in other markets keeping steady is the name of the game. The increase of supply chain and business operation-related complexities is placing a significant amount of press coverage on today’s automotive industry participants.
While the increase in business complexity has been painful for many, product, support, and end of life complexities have also increased significantly during the same time frame. All of this has forced many in the automotive industry to rethink, enhance, and innovate the way they think about and use product lifecycle management (PLM) enabling solutions. For some, their key PLM solution providers have guided them in this journey, for others, creative endeavors have resulted, and for the rest, lifecycle management breakthroughs are required, but are not yet available.
To better understand the current state and future potential of PLM in the automotive industry the following topics, along with others, will be addressed:
- Materials engineering and its impact on all lifecycle phases need to be understood and enabled.
- New manufacturing technologies, such as 3D printing, must be adopted as well as the optimization of new products and associated manufacturing and service processes.
- Software development must be managed as part of the overall product development process, instead of as a side effort.
- Collaboration must evolve to mean co-development across the supply chain, from ideation to retirement. To support enhanced collaboration, practitioners are turning to model-based systems engineering.
- Simulation and analysis must be used early and often in the product definition process, not just to simulate the product but also the processes.
- The Internet of Things (IoT) and other emerging technology enablers and how these are being incorporated into go forward strategies.