
Leaders' Summit at COExperience
The Leaders' Summit at COExperience consists of one day (Monday, September 14) of special programming for the business leaders of today and tomorrow. Click here for registration instructions.
The Summit will consist of panelists that are experts within in their companies and in our community discussing:

3DEXPERIENCE Deployment
How your company can leverage the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to manage complez challenges.

Cloud First
Cloud first refers to software solutions designed specifically to utilize modern cloud computing functionality.
Leaders' Summit Sessions
Click on each session name and speaker name to learn more:
Digital Twin
Click to Learn More
The topic of the Digital Twin is exploding in interest as well as complexity. This concept is the new frontier for almost all industries. There are key elements that need to be considered on the part of the digital transformation journey towards enabling leadership in such “Experience-driven” ecosystems. A major capability that needs to be enabled to achieve such leadership is “cognitive” behavior and “continuous” engineering throughout the engineering process, lifecycle and the product/system in service. Some supplemental capabilities towards achieving this level include:
• IoT (Internet of Things) enablement
• Digital Twin capability
• Deep learning
• Predictive analytics
Scalable communication and compute infrastructure are required to address the ever-increasing complexity of products and the engineering processes that help promote innovation.
This roundtable will include leaders from various industries and consultants to discuss the current state and hype of the Digital Twin and its impact on the sustainability of businesses.
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Frank Popielas, Managing Partner, SMS_ThinkTank
Frank Popielas is currently Managing Partner and Co-founder of SMS_ThinkTank™. He has over 20 years of global experience in engineering and R&D product and materials development, as well as testing, with a specific focus on the development and application of simulation tools, and the establishment of the required supporting infrastructure at Dana Holding Corporation. |
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Ed Dreyer, Senior IT Manager, Boeing
Ed Dreyer is a Senior Manager of Connected Factory and Digital Manufacturing, a part of Information Technology and Data Analytics in Product Systems. In this role, he is responsible and has oversight for Production System Modeling and Digital Twin using Dassault Systemes 3D Experience with focus on DELMIA. He is also the IT Program Manager for automating a wire harness design process used by BCA mechanics and quality team. |
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Darrel Meffert, Enterprise Strategy Manager, Caterpillar
Darrel has been employed with Caterpillar for over 23 years and he currently serves as the leading Caterpillar’s Enterprise Simulation Strategy. He also leads a “Center-of-Expertise” providing the following simulation services to the Caterpillar product organizations immersive visualization, computational fluid dynamics, in-cylinder combustion analysis, torsional vibration analysis for drivetrain systems, Real-time performance & controls simulation for understanding the interaction of major machine systems, statistical tolerance analysis. |
3DX Deployment
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In this panel, the panelists will discuss:
• Digital Twin
• Where are we going and what do we need by when?
• Identification of current business process then migration from “as is” to “future state.”
• Understanding the data model and sources of various information
• Business process development to adjust/migrate to the 3DX Platform
• Application deployment
• Application implementation
• Training
• Measures
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Clifton Davies, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics
Clif Davies is a Lockheed Martin Aeronautics engineer with over 30 years of experience, mostly in aircraft conceptual design in the Skunk Works. Design tool development responsibilities resulted in leading roles in PLM implementation projects for ADP. In 2019 Clif changed roles to become a business architect for engineering, and was selected as an LM Fellow for conceptual design and digital engineering. Clif was part of the team to select 3DX for implementation at LM Aero and has an active role in updating the company architecture to take advantage of and integrate the new technology. |
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Jeff Hopkins, Digital Foundation Transformation Leader, Corporate R&D and Quality Assurance; P&G
Passionate global digital transformation executive with a proven track record of activating digital enabled work process transformation to drive irresistibly superior innovation, breakthrough productivity gains, slashed time to market and tangible value creation. Broad experience across multiple business units and two geographies, leading technical and multi-functional teams to extraordinary outcomes. |
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Ed Dreyer, Senior IT Manager, Boeing
Ed Dreyer is a Senior Manager of Connected Factory and Digital Manufacturing, a part of Information Technology and Data Analytics in Product Systems. In this role, he is responsible and has oversight for Production System Modeling and Digital Twin using Dassault Systemes 3D Experience with focus on DELMIA. He is also the IT Program Manager for automating a wire harness design process used by BCA mechanics and quality team. |
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Vetrivel Chidambaram, Oceaneering
Vetri Chidambaram, Manager of Engineering Solutions at Oceaneering, is responsible for global Engineering Tools implementation, Run & maintain, Usability improvements and processes, facilitate Roadmap strategy; product lifecycle management & product structure; and oversight of CAD tools, including deployment, user support and training. Vetri has served as Program Manager of Oceaneering Business Systems upgrades including ERP PeopleSoft, PLM & CAD systems over multiple years and been working in this space over the last 23+ years. Vetri has a Master of Business Administration and holds an Engineering degree in Electronics. |
Cloud First
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What is it?
By hosting (on Outscale) a ‘standard’ 3D Experience Platform as a SaaS solution, Dassault provides immediate access to the majority of their solutions, with upgrades and new features deployed sooner than can be done in the traditional ‘on premise’ environment, while also reducing the need for hardware (servers) in the customer network.Why?
Rapid ramp up to use; access to the latest features and functions; reduced capital expenditures for hardware (servers and storage). AND – develop winning solutions in an ‘agile’ environment without (potentially) the overhead associated with using standard ‘in-house’ solutions.
What are the use cases?
Early access to new features in any of the solutions Dassault provides on the cloud (CATIA, DELMIA, SIMULIA, BIOVIA, etc.). “Early adopter” training of champions for new releases of software (CATIA on the Platform for CATIA V5 customers) Special projects where collaboration is required with new or existing partners that you do not want to (or cannot) put on your internal Platform.
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Moderator: Rekha Kamat 3DEXPERIENCE Platform Business Development Executive, Dassault Systemes |
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Bob Deragisch, Director of Engineering and Infrastructure Services, Global Data Privacy and IT Regulatory Compliance Director; Parker Hannifin Corporation
Bob Deragisch has been a supporter of CATIA since 1984 (Version 2), as well as all things engineering since 1977. Immediate past president of COE, Bob Deragisch works for a company that utilizes almost every major DS brand to some extent, and have a vast set of experience supporting DS products and the infrastructure on which each runs. |
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James Kotronis, Founder and Managing Member, KOTRONIS Consulting
James Kotronis has over 25 years of experience in the direct application of relational parametric tools in the fields of design, architecture, construction and fabrication. His work focuses on improving design performance through the synthesis of design, construction and fabrication thinking across disciplines and stakeholder boundaries. |
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Samantha Nervo Sr. Engineer & PMO for PLM Digital Transformation,Bridgestone Americas
Samantha Nervo is the Senior Engineer & PMO for PLM Digital Transformation at Bridgestone Americas where she creates new processes for simulation, training users on tools, leading the effort of user input in the development of software. Prior, Samantha held a position in OE design and lead Tech service for Nissan with Bridgestone Americas. Nervo earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University and her MS in Business Administration from Ohio University. |
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Andy Kalambi, President and CEO, Rize Inc |
How to Register
- Login to your COE profile (You must login for to access member pricing)
- Click here to get to the registration page
- Select "Leaders’ Summit"
- Proceed through the registration system*
*The Leaders’ Summit is a one-day event. If you wish to attend the full conference, make sure to add on the full conference in the add-on section.