Mr Stefano Odorizzi, CEO of the Italian-based international engineering simulation consulting firm, EnginSoft, key sponsors and hosts of the conference, stated, “With the growing impetus towards Industry 4.0 and the ever more important business drivers to lower costs, increase innovation and improve productivity, this conference, which to the best of my knowledge is the longest running in this sector, has become an increasingly important event on the calendar for engineers to network, update their skills and learn about the latest technology developments and industry trends.”
This year’s programme entitled “Evolving engineering simulation: The age of the digital twin” featured more than 150 speakers and 60 exhibitors and sponsors from different industry sectors and was attended by 1,000 delegates from all over the world. Odorizzi explained, “The digital twin is a virtual model or meta-model that accurately replicates a physical asset, service or process, allowing businesses to explore various possibilities created by changes to variables and dynamics. The Gartner Group has named digital twins as one of its Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for the past two years.”
The Plenary session of the conference demonstrated how different industries are applying digital twins and other engineering simulation techniques to address product and process innovation in the move to Industry 4.0. Keynote addresses were presented by speakers from Ford Motor Company, CNH Industrial, the Kempten University of Applied Sciences, the Bruno Kessler Foundation and the University of Manchester, among others. There was also a rich programme of technical presentations and workshops that allowed the delegates to deepen their knowledge in specific technologies, techniques and approaches, as well as round tables that discussed the business challenges posed by various aspects of Industry 4.0.
Exhibitors included all the big brands in computer-aided engineering such as ANSYS, RecurDyn, modeFrontier and MapleSoft as well as other companies from Europe, the Far East, South Africa and the USA. Korean company FunctionBay Inc, specialists in flexible multibody dynamics software, used the event to announce their new European distributors, RecurDyn Europe, while South African company M-Tech Industrial was present to announce Flownex Europe, its new joint venture with EnginSoft to distribute and market in Europe the company’s flagship product Flownex, the only system level thermal fluid flow software to hold a nuclear accreditation.
Delegates to the 34th CAE Conference could also spend time in the Research Agorà, an important forum dedicated to Research Project Consortia, which this year featured 10 projects from smart manufacturing and the Internet of Things, big data and analytics, aerospace and defence, high performance computing, transportation and energy.
“An important focus of the conference was to grow knowledge, encourage adoption and deepen skills in simulation-based engineering and science. Another way the conference delivers this is through the Poster Awards, a contest open to all students, graduates, researchers and faculty members from academic institutes and research centres with the dual purposes of recognizing excellence and innovation, and bridging the gap between academia and industry. This year 39 projects were selected. Over 17,000 votes were received online for the projects and the five finalists were selected by a panel of judges from industry and academia,” stated Odorizzi.
“Last but not least, the conference facilitated many opportunities for engineers with experience in software to meet and interact with engineers with hardware expertise, an essential process to facilitate the necessary integration to enable industry 4.0,” concluded Odorizzi.
