Aras, the only resilient platform provider for digital industrial applications, today announced that General Motors, Huntington Ingalls, Kawasaki, SAIC, and Seaspan will headline ACE 2020, the annual global conference for the Aras community, taking place March 16-18 in Boston, MA. ACE 2020 marks Aras’ 20^th anniversary and will bring together thought leaders and decision makers from around the world to share best practices on how to leverage disruptive technology and empower organizations with the flexibility to overcome tomorrow’s challenges.

This year’s conference agenda aims to help organizations take ownership of their product lifecycle by connecting end-to-end, actionable data with the teams who need it to accelerate both product improvements and strategic agility. ACE 2020 will unite product engineering experts and leaders in technology from multiple industries, including automotive, aerospace & defense, shipbuilding, industrial, and medical devices, to discuss the progress made and lessons learned from the challenges they face. During the three-day event, attendees will hear from dozens of thought leaders, Aras community members, executives, and industry experts, including keynotes from:

• General Motors: Engineering Change Management at General Motors – Challenges and Successes
  General Motors will share their journey to realize the management of 400 plus programs in Engineering Change Management (ECM). Sheryl Balsley, Carlo Giugliano, and Peter Swartz will show how this effort has affected their business across partnerships and alliances and discuss some of the security challenges associated with cross-enterprise projects. 
• Huntington Ingalls: Legacy Warship Data – The Ingalls Shipbuilding Consolidation Journey
  Ingalls Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries, recently completed another leg in their PLM journey: consuming multiple legacy systems’ data and artifacts from design and construction into a single toolset. The continuing challenge is finding ways to consolidate data, artifacts, and program specific functionality into a single platform for configuration management, while integrating all key business systems and tools. In this session, Amanda Cunningham will discuss how Ingalls Shipbuilding was able to not only accomplish this feat but did so successfully, and in less than a year.
• Kawasaki Heavy Industries: Optimizing the Entire Value Chain Using PLM as the Backbone
  Responding to rapid changes in the business environment and accommodating unique processes across many different business units were the goals of Kawasaki Heavy Industries’ PLM journey. This presentation by Yutaro Mishima will discuss how KHI achieved flexibility, agility, and sustainability for future disruptive innovation with a unified digital platform as the backbone of their entire value chain.
• SAIC: Maximizing Value by Asserting Control Over Your Enterprise Digital Transformation
  This presentation from Douglas Orellana and Michael Vinarcik will discuss the lessons learned from SAIC’s digital transformation journey and fundamental principles that can be used by organizations of any size to accelerate their adoption of digital technologies and their ability to participate in the emerging digital ecosystem. 
• Seaspan: Seaspan Vancouver Shipyard’s Aras Journey – From Document Management System to Integrated Shipbuilding PLM Tool
  This presentation will discuss the evolution of Seaspan’s Aras tool from a document management system to the central component of a fully integrated PLM ecosystem. Chris Phillips will share the methodology behind developing an organization-wide PLM roadmap, and the people, processes, and technology implemented and planned to achieve Seaspan’s goals.

The Digital Thread in Action track will demonstrate to attendees how the Aras community is realizing the vision of a single integrated Digital Thread to own the lifecycle. The Build with Aras track will show first-hand how companies in the Aras community have leveraged the resilient platform to build enterprise applications quickly, while preserving scalability and upgradeability. Attendees can customize their conference experience according to industry-specific tracks for automotive and aerospace & defense. The event will feature 18 breakout sessions led by customers including Andersen Windows, Littelfuse, Rheem, NuScale Power, Parata, Nidec, and many more.

A panel discussion with leading companies including ANSYS, General Motors, Huntington Ingalls, and Microsoft will give attendees the opportunity to learn what Aras’ customers have built with the platform, the business value they have realized, how the experience of building with Aras compares with other solutions, and what their future holds in terms of expanding or building other solutions.

“Over the last 20 years, PLM has grown beyond its traditional boundaries as business requirements change and product complexity increases. It is critical for organizations to have strategies in place that will prepare them to meet tomorrow’s unknown challenges,” said Peter Schroer, CEO of Aras. “Our annual user conference is a great opportunity for industry experts to come together to understand what others are doing to overcome the restrictions of legacy systems and I look forward to working with our community to apply adaptable solutions to manage the industry’s most complex problems.” 

Showcase Partners for the event include Anautics, ANSYS, CADENAS, Elysium, Essig PLM, IpX, ITI, Minerva, ProStep, Razorleaf, TCS, T-Systems, XPLM, and Zionex. Learn more about them here.

Full agenda details and registration are available here. For press passes, please contact [email protected].