3 - 4 November 2003 • Disney's Paradise Pier Hotel, Anaheim, California

Background & Purpose

Reducing costs and compressing schedules while maximizing payload and range, minimizing fuel usage, and maintaining and enhancing safety, performance, durability, passenger survivability and overall product quality are top priorities for aerospace and defense manufacturers. Consequently, building and testing physical prototypes—expensive, time-consuming bottlenecks in the creation of new products—are receiving increased attention from top-level management. Replacing more and more physical testing with digital methods while more closely coupling aerodynamics, controls, structural and other simulation domains to advance design optimization and Six Sigma goals are seen as approaches that can dramatically reduce development and product costs, slash months off program schedules, win new business and drive innovation. At the same time, aerospace and defense manufacturers are struggling to balance internally developed solutions and non-proprietary COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) solutions to reduce lifecycle total cost of ownership.

daratechDPS AERO2003—Digital Product Simulation for Aerospace & Defense—is a high-level, definitive conference focused on reducing costs, accelerating schedules, and improving quality and performance through strategic application of digital simulation and validation technologies. A unique forum in which real-world user cases—successes and failures—are presented and discussed from a business-value perspective, daratechDPS AERO2003 will bring together those responsible for engineering modeling & simulation and validation as well as physical test and measurement managers from the world’s leading aerospace and defense manufacturers to explore strategies to cut costs, speed product development, control quality to:

• Reduce physical prototyping, strengthen analytical to physical correlation
• Quantify business benefits of simulation technologies and processes
• Overcome barriers to integration, interoperability, data & process management
• Manage trade-offs between COTS and in-house developed software
• Reduce aircraft lifecycle TCO (total cost of ownership)

Aerospace companies squeezed; turn to CAE
Aerospace manufacturers are being squeezed by the aviation downturn, spending cutbacks, schedule pressures and continually changing program requirements, while defense contractors face price and schedule pressures as well as heightened competition. Nevertheless, aerospace and defense manufacturers continue to step up their investments in engineering modeling & simulation and validation tools and processes. Indeed, the market for aerospace and defense digital simulation solutions and services is forecast to top $290 million in 2003, up 10% according to Daratech’s latest research. What’s driving this surge of activity, and will all this investment yield higher quality, more productive solutions?

Challenges not just technological
What can executives working to realize digital simulation’s full potential do to overcome the daunting business, organizational and technological challenges involved? Many are finding the greatest obstacles are not technological but managerial, cultural and psychological—preconceived notions, organizational inertia, internal and external politics, budgets. How can the new technologies and methods be cost-justified when payback may not come until years into a program? What are the organizational challenges of better interfacing digital modeling & simulation departments and physical test organizations? Likewise, how can the domains of analysis and product design be brought closer to one another? What integrated design/analysis tools and processes are yielding big returns at top aerospace and defense manufacturers? How are manufacturers deploying and managing digital modeling & simulation across globally dispersed enterprises and supply chains and implementing simulation-based procurement? Above all, how can digital modeling & simulation be deployed throughout product development to have the greatest impact on cost, schedule, performance and quality?

Top executives share what works
If you plan to attend just one industry event in the next 12 months, make it daratechDPS AERO2003. In the management track, roundtable and technical sessions, breakouts and corridor conversations you’ll discover what works and what doesn’t, what the risks are, and strategies for success. Attendees will leave this conference energized with new strategies and action plans that can be put into practice right away.

daratechDPS AERO2003 offers a balance of business strategy and technology assessment you won’t find at user-group meetings or association conferences, all in a vendor-neutral setting tailored for senior practitioners and decision-makers. Further, the networking at this conference is invaluable—you’ll meet and share lessons of experience with the right people from across your industry. This time-efficient conference is also the place to meet the CEOs, CTOs and other top executives and technologists of the world’s leading digital product simulation solution providers. The highly interactive program is specifically designed to give individuals ample opportunity to meet informally one-on-one, or in the context of the many topical sessions and technical colloquia.

Of course, daratechDPS AERO2003’s Co-Sponsors—the world’s leading providers of digital product simulation software and hardware solutions for aerospace and defense manufacturers—will be on hand, most represented by their CEOs and CTOs, to conduct breakout sessions, showcase new solutions, and share their vision and strategies. Featured will be presentations of technical philosophy and direction, live demonstrations, and an opportunity to meet and chat with the CEOs and CTOs of the world’s leading developers.

© Copyright 2003 Daratech, Inc. All rights reserved.