This year, we have been treated to one virtual conference after another, attending from the comfort and convenience of our offices, or home offices, as the case may be. Dassault Systèmes, like every other big software vendor, has gone virtual with its shows and conferences, including the seasonal “Forums,” which in a happier time, popped up around the world, as well as the last 3DEXPERIENCE World (previously known as SOLIDWORKS World). The pros and cons of virtual conferences are yet to be discussed, but it is safe to say that getting to a virtual conference is far easier than getting to a physical one.

The title of this conference, “Experience is Human,” draws on Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE and the human condition. Dassault Systèmes, perhaps more than other company that deals with design and engineering software, constantly reminds us of its holistic approach. The message is loud and clear: the software is good—and so is the company.

Erik Swedberg was first on stage. Swedberg is the managing director of the Americas, responsible for a third of Dassault Systèmes’ worldwide revenue. He was quick to make Dassault Systèmes software relevant for our times, from technologies such as electric vehicles and medical devices (his customers make half the world’s medical devices and drugs, including many of the vaccines for COVID) and two-thirds of the world’s microchips, and far from the world of technology, showing off Dassault Systèmes’ customer diversity, he counts over two thousand fashion brands.

What this pandemic has brought us is opportunity, said Swedberg. We can use this pause to reset. The processes we may have neglected, we have time to attend to them now. The electric vehicles we have long promised, let’s get them started. The speed at which a vaccine was made available, if only [using a Dassault Systèmes catch phrase] we had used a digital twin to test the vaccine, we would have had it sooner.

The pandemic has exposed the fragility of our supply chain. It wasn’t just toilet paper, joked Swedberg. Supply chains were a mess globally. Shipping, land and sea, got jammed up. We need the ability to find new vendors, new suppliers, new services. (This may have been a pitch for 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace, Dassault Systèmes online collection of industrial service providers, though it was not mentioned per se.)

Companies and customers alike have reset where employees work. Remote work has become the predominant type of work. Our cloud solutions help with that, said Swedberg.

There are three things that companies seek from a solution partner, noted Swedberg, and the first is innovation.

Innovation did not take a break during COVID. In fact, the number of patents filed actually rose. The number of patents granted dropped by a mere 0.68 percent—perhaps the result of a decline in government services. We are still innovating, said Swedberg, but the need to make them real, from design to manufacture—and given the disruption in the supply chain and labor supplies, the situation is critical.

“The companies that will win in this environment are those that are able to quickly and nimbly create new client customer experiences,” said Swedberg.

For example, the French-American Interstellar Labs, designed its BioPods, plant-growing pods for the Earth, Moon and Mars, using CATIA on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

The environmentally controlled, closed-loop systems are the brainchild of Barbara Belvisi. The self-contained system is designed to produce and recycle all that it needs, including water and air to produce food. The BioPods can operate independently or be attached forming mini cities for extraterrestrial living.

“This is really important as we’re working on many different components and need to ensure we don’t duplicate work and are always referring to the latest version,” Belvisi says in a Dassault Systèmes case study. “The platform supports us to have the most efficient working processes and avoid reworking designs from scratch. Having real-time access is critical as we can be running lots of different iterations at any one time.”

Dassault Systèmes may have the widest range of industries for which it can provide software solutions—and every year seems to add more. We see a make-up station from the Boticário Group, a Brazilian beauty product giant with 4,000 points of sale in Brazil that produces 300 million products a year, now with help of Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE. That’s one product per Brazilian, according to Boticário’s website, making it the largest beauty franchise in the world.

We wonder how a sales team that sells CATIA to Boeing can sell ENOVIA to ECCO (a custom shoe manufacturer). But there is no hitch in Swedberg’s pitch. A product line is a product line, whether products are made of steel or cloth, each has processes Dassault Systèmes can streamline, containers that can be designed, supply lines that can be mended, and so on.

A McKinsey survey published in October found that COVID sped up the adoption of digital technology by several years—and it may be responsible for an acceleration in innovation that could last for a while.

The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the digitization of customer interactions by several years. (Picture courtesy of McKinsey & Company.)

The study of supply chain management was barely a thing a few years ago—and now it is the phrase on everyone’s lips, thanks to COVID, which broke many links in supply chains.

The concept of the supply chain was pioneered by the University of Syracuse as early as 1919 under the specialization of “Traffic and Transportation.” The University of Tennessee may have coined the term “supply chain management” many years later.

The logistics of procuring and transporting supplies to make a finished product became necessary as soon as local sourcing gave way to global sourcing. Efficiencies in shipping and transportation made supply chains that circled the globe. In Ninety Percent of Everything, a book about the rise of modern maritime trade and container ships, author Rose George reveals a most bizarre effect of cheap shipping: It makes more financial sense for Scottish cod to be sent ten thousand miles to China to be filleted, then sent back to Scottish shops and restaurants, than to pay Scottish filleters to perform the task. Joe Bennett traces the cotton fiber from where it is grown to where it is woven to where it is sold (as a 6 pack of underwear for $5) in the 2009 book Where Underpants Come From. Such oceangoing journeys, once made into novels, are now just the supply chain.

Costing pennies per product does not belie the complexity of the journey. As we await our Amazon shipments, our car parts, even our medicine, the fragility of the supply chain is an ever-present concern. One might say it’s a first world problem and, indeed, the affluent who order products online, are more affected by delays in the shipping of products that are out of stock, but as it is the affluent who affect the economy, we all must pay attention. Most U.S. consumers (71%) have been unable to buy a product or had a significant delay in obtaining a product, according to a recent Gallup Poll. Even more are worried about it. With worry comes panic. Christmas retail shopping, usually officially starting on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), has already started by those who are panicking about a holiday season without gifts.

“What better way to understand supply changes than a digital twin model of your company’s entire manufacturing operation?” asked Swedberg. “As you move through your big reset, you need the insight and flexibility—and we can help you at every step.”

We’re in 11 different industries. We have industry-leading solutions in design, PLM and simulation—all under one 3DEXPERIENCE platform, said Swedberg.

Should that not be enough to choose Dassault Systèmes, consider the nature of the company itself, said Swedberg. Dassault Systèmes strives for a higher purpose than transactions of software sales and subscriptions. Indeed, the company states a more humanistic approach, emphasizing the environment and sustainability and social issues even more than it promotes its products on their technical merits.

“As we create value, what are we taking from the planet?” asked Swedberg. “Harmonizing product and life lies at the heart of everything we do,” he said, echoing CEO Bernard Charles (who was up next).