IEN Europe participated for the first time in LiveWorx, the event to enhance the digital transformation experience of smart, connected enterprises. The show closed its doors last week in Boston, after four days of intense breakout sessions, technology trainings, live exhibitions and demonstrations, professional exchange, networking, parties, ideas, inspiring moments. The next appointment of this ''high-energy'' event is already scheduled for June 8-11, 2020.
Disclosing the potential energy
''Energy is the capacity to do work and cannot be created or destroyed but it can change form,’’ said Jim Happelmann, CEO at PTC, during his opening speech. LiveWorx, organized by the computer software and technology company PTC – headquartered in Boston – is a way to increase our potential energy and get digital transformation on the next level. The idea is: ‘’Come to LiveWorx, get the most out of it, and transform your potential energy into new energy when you go back to your company.’’
What does it exactly mean? ‘’In business, there is always a lot of work to do and the levels to get the work done are tipically three: The employees level, the machines level, and the computers level. Computers and machines are there to free us up so we can focus our capacity to do works in areas that are usually a human prerogative: Strategizing, Planning, Innovating.’’ said Jim Happelmann.
Transforming your processes and people
The objective at Liveworx is to take this abstract concept of digital transformation and make it tangible and actionable, by giving specific and powerful examples that people can take and apply immediately to their business. PTC has been focusing for years in cutting-edge fields like IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Generative Design, Real-Time Simulation, enabled by High-Performance Computing, Cloud and 5G. All of this is tied together thanks to critical concepts like Digital Thread and Digital Twin. ‘’PTC CAD and PLM has proven to be the company’s new technology breakthroughs. Technologies like IoT and AI and AR and High-performance computing are actually transforming CAD and PLM too, and this is evident in our Vuforia app.’’ added Mr. Happelmann.
For Jim Happelmann, CAD and PLM will never go out of style, and they are truly going to transform the industrial panorama with the key endorsement of a boosted digital and human world.
The intersection of the physical, digital, and human world
With the IoT, smart connected machines are more productive, and the workload can be raised without impacting the workflow, with the advantage that we can control, monitor and optimize the digital chain. The potential energy is therefore increased across these three dimensions of the physical, digital, and human world.
Innovation happens in the intersections of different ideas and forces. When Virtual and Augmented Reality come into play and we marry digital with human, ‘’we get widely more productive workers thanks to the ability of the digital world to monitor and optimize the work of humans. That’s what Smart Connected People are about.’’ explained Jim Happelmann. Intersecting the ideas of smart connected people and smart connected products we get smart connected processes.
Volvo and Beneteau
Use cases were at the center of LiveWorx. PTC aims to build a community of historical clients willing to share roadmaps and visions that can leverage the industry to transform technology and people. At the show, PTC demonstrated real examples of how the integration of AR, AI and IoT-based solutions can empower existing technologies, taking them to the next level. An example of what PTC calls ''the digital thread’’ can be found in its collaboration with Volvo. Volvo began collaborating with PTC back in 2016, when the company decided to test PTC’s Thingworx and Vuforia in France. Together with PTC, Volvo reimagined the design for state-of-the-art trucks to reduce the weight of the engine without compromising performance. This means to generate an optimized design thanks to PTC generative design platform and to perform quality control checks easily and reliably.
For Beneteau, well-known French sail and motor boat manufacturer, PTC has been an important partner to meet client needs for customized products. ‘’We needed a powerful tool, like the PLM, to handle different customized configurations and options for our clients. A tool allowing us to reflect immediately and with accuracy all the modifications in our design projects. Thanks to PTC’s PLM software Windchill, this is now possible.’’ declared Bertrand Dutilleul, DSI Global, Groupe Beneteau. With the 3D digital twin model of the boat, the client can have an internal vision of how his product will look like.
To know more: https://www.liveworx.com/
Sara Ibrahim
