#20: What Trends Impact Innovation in the Automotive Industry?

Laurence Montanari: Hello, everyone. Thank you, Morgan, for inviting me. There are four trends I want to share with you today. The first one is electrification. Last year, 44% of vehicles were electrified. It's very important. It was in Europe, but it's a very important rate.

The second trend is supply chain resilience. We know there are many shortages and they really need to fight to get parts to produce their vehicles.

The third trend is electronics. It's everywhere. It's called software-defined vehicles. It's a new way to develop vehicles, and provides a lot of data coming from the use of vehicles in order to improve the experience of the users.

And the fourth one is the projects of the automotive industry. It's short projects, agile projects. And the cloud technology is really a trend we can see today in this industry.

Morgan Zimmermann: That's very interesting. When I'm listening to you, what I'm seeing is drivers or changes that are not small things; they are major transformation drivers. It's probably having many impacts on the way your customers are working, the way they're interacting with their ecosystem and the way they're reorganizing themselves.

Laurence Montanari: Yes, of course, I can share with you a few insights. First, the value is breaking silos. It's the value of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. The second one is that we can speak the language of 3D. When you need to exchange with a partner or supplier, let’s say you are French, but he's Japanese, Chinese or American; the common language of this industry is 3D, and everyone understands 3D. So imagine that you are able to put all data related to a situation, a topic or an issue around the 3D, you win time and you break silos because everyone understands that.

The third point is the timescale. It took 50 years to develop an internal combustion (IC) engine with gasoline. It took around 10 years to develop the electric vehicle (EV). Now, we can see new vehicle platforms, and it takes only two years. The timescale is drastically reduced, thanks to all these technologies. What is so important in this industry is that I always remember this sentence: “Speak with data”.

Morgan Zimmermann: I love “speak with data”.

Laurence Montanari: Data is everywhere — on the product, on the process, on the execution, everywhere. So, for example, I have a question for you, a surprise question. So, how do you qualify with data on the comfort of a vehicle when you are a rear passenger?

Morgan Zimmermann: Oh. That's a challenging question. But indeed, what has been shadowed by your question is the fact that when it comes to speaking with data, you have different types of data you want to use. Of course, you have very objective and explicit data: the weight, the cost, the quality. The quality is not so objective. But at least weight and cost are factual numbers. But then you have very subjective data like consumer feedback. And that is, in most cases, language, language from the consumers themselves. The ability to interpret such language requires the ability to elevate all of that data, sentences and words into a common ontology that actually allows us to objectivize and quantify very subjective values such as rear passenger experience.

Laurence Montanari: I think you are ready to develop a car, next year, maybe.

Morgan Zimmermann: Well, I love how you represent the values of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Somehow, if I listen to you, the virtual twin experience is at the core of what you just described because we have the most advanced representation of the product. And you said 3D is everywhere in automotive, so it's available there. We have the ability to elevate the data into knowledge and know-how that becomes actionable and understandable because it is well-projected on the virtual twin. And then, we have the ability to connect the human people, the teams and the processes to make things happen quicker, leaner and without friction, which is probably essential to serve the speed change that you explained going from 50 years to two years in program execution. That's amazing.

Laurence Montanari: Yes, for sure. So, the first example we have currently is with a French carmaker. We started with the virtual twin of their product but now we are moving to the virtual twin of their company. And the supply chain is important because it's an important virtual twin in order to manage the supply chain and to be sure that you have the right parts at the right moment in the production, at the right price. This is because cost is very important in mass production in the automotive sector. So, we started from the virtual twin of their supply chain, and we are able to manage risk.

In this model, we have real data. So, what is the increase in cost if the currency or the inflation rate changes? What are the impacts on the vehicle and its margin if there are shortages of metals or parts? We can support them in anticipating and better managing all those risks because these risks in the supply chain are real.

Morgan Zimmermann: I think it's a very interesting example. Very interesting because it's not obvious for everyone in the industry to see Dassault Systèmes modeling the supply chain. But in the example that you mentioned, the only single reason why we are the most legitimate in doing it is because we can match the supply chain to the vehicle to be manufactured. And because we are capable of matching that supply chain to the product to be manufactured, we are indeed capable of anticipating on each and every single configuration what the impact of an event in the industry is, whether shortages or cost improvements. Because we can do it on the vehicle and we can do it on the production so we can understand what's the impact on the entire budget of the company.

Laurence Montanari: Exactly.

Morgan Zimmermann: And this ability to mix and match the virtual twin of the product with the virtual twin of the supply chain, with the virtual twin of the enterprise, I believe, is putting us in a very unique position to transform and support the transformation of this industry.

Laurence Montanari: Yes. It's true. But it's not the only one. Let's speak about the standardization of parts, for example. Do you know how many parts are in the warehouses of carmakers in order to make repairs?

Morgan Zimmermann: I have actually no idea.

Laurence Montanari: Okay. So the minimum is 200,000 parts. So imagine that your car is coming to the dealer. So, imagine the dealer does not have your part; it's not possible. So, standardization is the way to be sure that the dealer will be able to repair cars in an efficient way and give your car back at the end of the day. So, the standardization of parts is a very important example.

Morgan Zimmermann: I agree. And by the way, that leads to two reactions from me. Reaction number one is, if I look at our portfolio, we already have a pretty large portfolio of industry process experiences in the automotive industry for planning optimization and vehicle program optimization with data on cost, LCA or value network optimization. But there is probably another area where we could learn from aerospace. In aerospace, we have used virtual twin experiences to enhance the quality and availability of fleet in operations. And of course, this is only for thousands of aircraft or tens of thousands of aircraft.

But in my dream, why don't we use virtual twin experiences in the automotive industry for millions of cars to serve exactly the problems that you just anticipated?

Laurence Montanari: Yes, it's a good idea. And clearly, there is industry cross-fertilization. We need to take the example of aerospace and defense, which is advanced in the maintenance of aircraft.

Morgan Zimmermann: Thank you very much, Laurence. I think not only do we already have a great portfolio in the automotive industry, but we can extend it and go into after-sales and operations. A bright future in front of us. Thank you again for your commitment to virtual twin experience and data-driven virtual twin experience.

Laurence Montanari: Thank you, Morgan. Thank you, all of you.

Narrator: Disruptors Unleashed is produced by Dassault Systèmes. For more episodes, follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer or your nearest streaming platforms. To learn more about Dassault Systèmes, visit us at 3ds.com.