Industry and academia collaborate at St. Louis RUG Meeting

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I attended the St. Louis PLM World Regional User Group (RUG) meeting in November. It was great to see a lot of local companies attend the event. We encourage educators and students to check out the schedule of upcoming RUG events. If there is one near you, consider a field trip to the event.

One of the main attractions was the keynote speech from Dr. Nathan Hartman, vice-chairman, PLM World and a professor at Purdue Polytechnic. He talked about how to prepare the workforce for digital manufacturing, including:

what new capabilities, skills and mindsets are needed

how to identify, recruit and retain the right new talent

the need for more applied technology in engineering education

ongoing challenges with the Industrial Revolution throughIndustry 4.0.

He encouraged everyone to engage local schools in STEM. Purdue recently held its Fall PLM Center of Excellence meeting industry and academia discussed data and PLM for making better decisions.

Principia College-Steve Shedd did a great tour of their nine solar cars and the races over the past few years. He explained the important role NX played in the design all of their cars.

Afternoon sessions were training, whats new in NX11 etc. The latest release of NX introduces capabilities for convergent modeling, rapid manufacturing, with improved annotation, drafting and documentation, and rendering. Jerry Lewis talked about Model-Based Quality.