Keywords: Dassault Systèmes, V6 PLM, Cloud-Based SaaS, Lifelike Experience, 3D Digital Model, Robotic Surgery, Bio-Texture Modeling, PLM 2.0, Mechatronics, Bio PLM.
Summary
Attracting more than 1,600 attendees, including over 1,000 end-users, Dassault Systèmes held its 2011 Japan Forum in Tokyo on October 19. With the theme of "3D in Life - Revealing Evidence," this event was the official introduction of the company's latest release of the V6 PLM Platform (v2012) to the Japanese market. DS will now provide an option for customers to access this platform via a cloud-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.
Ordinarily held in the spring, the company postponed this year's event due to the catastrophic Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Attendees jammed into the general sessions in the morning and into the 49 sessions that followed in the afternoon. These included 24 case studies by DS customers, illustrating the steady recovery of the world's second largest industrial design country (Japanese manufacturers still design about 20 percent of the world's industrial products). The tenor of the DS keynotes, characterized this year by provocative messages to Japanese users and industries, differed somewhat from in the past. For the first time, DS also invited ten analysts from Asia – including ARC Advisory Group Japan – to Tokyo and prepared exclusive analyst sessions.
This report covers two speeches, both elaborating on the company's "3D lifelike experience" concept and theme.
3D Lifelike Experience with Bio-Texture Modeling for Surgical Applications
The keynote speech of Dr. Maki Sugimoto, Associate Professor of the Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, was an eye-opener. He showed audiences how "lifelike experience" applies today in the surgical field.
Dr. Sugimoto's raison d'etre as a surgeon is to secure not only the patient's bodily health, but also their mental health. From this perspective, for a surgeon, 3D becomes "3D+alpha." According to Dr. Sugimoto, this +alpha can vary in his and his team's development activities. For example, it could be a combination of virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality, involving information and communication technology (ICT), mobile technology, and cloud computing. Today, this 3D+alpha can be adopted into and fully utilized in surgical activities. He introduced some of the alphas his team developed on the surgical frontlines.
Consumer technologies based on ICT have changed the way doctors work. For example, developed by physicians at UCLA and Geneva University, OsiriX transforms X-ray images into 3D digital modeling images. From the surgeon's viewpoint, it is very useful to be able to find hidden cancers by making organs transparent and rotating them in 3D. By bringing those images into the operating room on an iPad, they can use them to help guide their surgery.
They have also developed functions that use image-guided navigation to guide a laparoscope's movement when inserted into an abdomen. In an augmented reality field within a real-time environment, they developed a method that enables images from the endoscope to follow the camera movement on the CT-scanned 3D images. Using this method, surgeons can execute an entire surgical operation through the endoscope in conjunction with ultrasonic technology. "This minimally invasive surgery is safer, certain and easier on the patient's body," Sugimoto said.
Further, they have extended its usage to robotic surgery. By monitoring the image-guided navigation system after the movement of the robot arms, surgeons can offer the most advanced surgical technologies to their patients, even in the most remote locations.
Image-Overlay Surgery
If a surgeon uses a monitor during an operation, there is a physical gap between the patient's body and the image on the monitor. Dr. Sugimoto's team resolved this using mixed reality technology to deliver imaging technology in a more intuitive way to improve surgical procedures. In one procedure, called Image-Overlay Surgery, they project OsiriX-generated 3D images of the organs of the patient onto the skin surface of the patient's abdomen. The projected images can be changed in volume and concentration in real time. In this manner, surgeons can "see" the patient's internal organs before beginning the actual surgical procedure or inserting the endoscope. Using the projected images, surgeons can avoid making too wide a cut.
"In the context of informed consent, this imaging data can be a powerful tool for doctors to explain to their patient the procedure of the surgery before the operation. In turn, for patients, it is also very persuasive material for understanding their individual body condition intuitively, without being bothered by medical terminology," Sugimoto explained.
"We see further the potential of 3D+alpha. For example, by adding the function of the heart as an alpha, the entire heart function could be evaluated by 3D digital modeling. We also developed 3D+sense of touch, and transformed virtual reality to actuality by using a 3D printer and various kinds of resin materials that can reproduce bio-texture accurately. For example, the texture of sick hepatic 3D modeling is softer, but cirrhosis of the liver modeling is harder. The technology, which we called Bio-Texture Modeling, can reproduce lesions by the grade of hardness."
By reproducing a variety of bio-texture models, such as 3D modeling of the heart, touchable breast cancer, a bone with osteoporosis with a honeycomb structure, or modeling of muscles using materials that can be split apart to provide a better view, it changes the quality of education dramatically for young doctors, medical interns, nurses, and even patients and their families. Surgeons can have exact identical hepatic 3D model of a patient's liver in their hands and even simulate operations by inserting a surgical scalpel before an actual operation. Now, bio-texture models are a part of surgical instruments. The models will also be very useful in improving the quality of remotely performed robotic surgery in the future.
According to Sugimoto, 3D lifelike experience may be a manufacturing term, but for the medical field, it is the way to improve human life by improving quality and efficiency when treating patients, and preventing diseases through better understanding of life and life-supporting activities.
"Using bio-texture modeling technology, we would like to advance further model innovations in cooperation with Dassault Systèmes and the 3D-printer company, Fasotec," he concluded.
Lifelike Experience for PLM 2.0
"Why is the launch of the lifelike experience so mission-critical to Japanese industries?" Bernard Charles, President and CEO of Dassault Systèmes, started his speech with this question, and continued;" I believe the world industry is again going to undergo a significant transformation."
According to Mr. Charles, there are four reasons for this:
Globalization, which used to be based on labor costs, has now become an innovation race
Sustainable green innovation. All industries are challenged to create clean products with new materials, traceability, compliance, and safety everywhere around the world
Mobility linked to the cloud. The community of knowledge is very critical
The factor of the voice of customers. Consumers have more impact on product selection and its successes. Innovation is going through a significant democratization. In the past, innovation was led by companies, mainly by large organizations with large R&D investments. The reality today is that many of the BRIC countries are the fastest growing, because innovation is at the front end of their policies. Many small groups of people are inventing new, good things. They are using tools which are very competitive, such as DS software SolidWorks and CATIA. It's not even a company, but rather groups of people and sometimes even students, that are inventing new concepts.
According to Mr. Charles, labor cost is not a factor anymore and green trends, mobility, and democratization of innovation are changing the game plan. Japanese industry, as well as European and US industries will be transformed to address those challenges.
Disruptive Technology
"In that context, for the past years, we have tried to evaluate at DS what could we do as disruptive technology to change the way innovation works," said Charles.
"3D democratization is happening. The companies that still use drawings cannot be competitive anymore, because 3D devices, 3D mobility, 3D as medium, and new engineers and technical people who are trained with 3D, 3D marketing, and serious gaming, are all coming.
"It is possible, today, to do zero-default geometry before any product design. It is possible to achieve zero defects in geometry in shape and assembly of parts. Today, if you do a test around the world, you would be astonished to see how many companies are still making a lot of geometry mistakes. It's a waste of time and money. It's possible to achieve significant savings, but it requires discipline and new methodology.
"Mechatronics is emerging. Products are not only about geometry any more. Mechatronic design also includes software, electronics and mechanical systems. Because all products are becoming smart, by including communication, mobility and connectability within consumer goods, manufacturers can gain competitive advantage through multi-discipline integration.
"Many people are still confused about digital documents and PLM. Managing digital documents does not bring a lot of value. PLM goes far beyond this. PLM is about modeling and simulating the entire lifecycle to provide deeper understanding.
"Lifelike experience is not about movies or gaming. It's about the way to understand what we experience. That will help people understand how products will be used in real life. There is no value for a product if the value of using it is not understood. Product value comes from using them, and experience with the products provides the needed understanding. That's why lifelike experience is so critical for the future of innovation. The systematic approach of lifelike experience can transform the value creation process. Lifelike experience is an expansion of PLM, and thus, an expansion of modeling and simulation. Japanese manufacturers are in an excellent position to understand its value to them."
Investing to Serve Society, Education, Research, and Business
To take a disruptive approach, DS is investing heavily. However, according to Mr. Charles, the company is not investing just to create better CAD tools. Instead, it is investing to better serve society, education, research and business. DS has earmarked $200 million dollars for a five-year, European Community-sponsored life sciences research program called Bio PLM.
According to Charles, these investments may not reflect DS' business structure in the future, but "By 2021, the structure of our company will have changed completely. In the next year, we will see companies being created from the ground up, whereby the connectivity with universities and with user association doing cloud sourcing of design will become very visible. The business structure of the company will not at all be the same.
"When you see what is happening at Sim-Drive in Japan to design and model e-car prototypes, and at the Medical School of Kobe University, it's clear there is a lot of innovation taking place, but significant challenges remain to the business. We're convinced that, in the future, groups of people will be able to publish their new ideas on the web and ask for a manufacturer to turn the ideas into products to ship back to them when ready.
Because consumer education and research will grow, Charles thinks more will be invented in this century than has been invented in the entire past history of humanity. "In ten years, I think that at least half and possibly up to two-thirds of our users will come from outside of our current business."
V6 Collaborative Platform
DS is providing one consistent collaborative platform, V6, for CATIA, SIMLIA, ENOVIA, DELMIA, and eventually even for SolidWorks.
According to Mr. Charles, "Many customers are asking us to connect our applications to legacy PDMs. While we have the capability to do this, we are more focused on the challenges of the future. Our future is lifelike experience connecting the most powerful design, simulation, and solution application set on one collaborative platform for manufacturing in the cloud.
The future of IT technology is about communication and mobility. The ENOVIA V6 platform is the only platform that can be made available in the cloud; its architecture can be used online at the customer's location. The cloud will create a new possible set of services, and V6 architecture is unique from that standpoint."
Provocative Choices for Future Innovation
"We are solving tomorrow's problems." Charles continued. "I know many competitors claim that we have poor connectivity. While this is not true, it does not worry me. The reality of innovation is not about connecting to the past. It's about building the next-generation application to create lifelike experience. I already invested $2 billion on the V6 platform to make a difference by creating the most innovative and disruptive platform for future growth."
He also explains, "Our system of the future, V6, is not BOM-based. The bill of materials is not part of the innovation process. That's a provocative choice we have made in V6. We also made provocative choices with the ERP. Customer relationships should be a part of social networking on PLM. Why do we value customer relationships in ERP? I have a company today where we are stopping using ERP and shifting to social networking-based collaboration using 3D SwYm."
"Don't compare V6 to V5. V6 is not "V5 plus 1." V6 is an experience platform to create a completely different way to connect you to your consumers and integrate disruptive innovation into all your company functions in a manner that makes your dream possible and your services successful," he added.
Last Word
Because the central issues of the lifelike experience is not management of the product, but rather, the value creation process, the original concept of PLM that DS invented more than 10 years ago already sounds outdated, even to them. When I asked Monica Menghini, Executive Vice President, about this, she agreed. To attract more customers from the various industries, DS must prove its strategy by executing in the market. Gaining adequate awareness of the unique issues of the Japanese manufacturing sector remains an additional challenge. Readers should heed DS's wake-up call on the transformation of the industry and the progress of innovation in the emerging countries.
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