NX CAE Symposium 2012 Kicks Off

NX CAE Symposium 2012 kicked off early this morning, at the beautiful and expansive campus of Hendrick Motorsports.  After an uneventful bus ride from the conference hotel, guests were ushered into the building that will be home to the conference over the next two days.

It wasn’t long before we could hear the muffled yet welcome roar of high output, V8 engines from an adjacent facility.  There was no doubting our proximity to some of the highest performing powertrains in NASCAR.  Dave Shook of Siemens PLM Software gave the opening address and extended a warm welcome to the attendees.  He shared perspectives on business performance, recent acquisitions, as well as the significance of the HD PLM vision to our overall strategy.

The first customer presentation of the day featured Jim Wall, Charles MacDonald, and Brian Fleck of Hendrick Motorsports.  Jim gave the audience an insightful overview of Hendrick today, including their history of successes in NASCAR competition, and the scale of engineering operations occurring behind the scenes, to make these wins a reality.  He also took a moment to share the journey of Rick Hendrick, a young man with a passion for speed who’s courage and willingness to embrace risk, gave rise to a highly successful enterprise – the Hendrick Automotive Group.  Jim noted how ‘breaking things’ is everyday business in motorsports.  The key however, he elaborated was not to break the same part twice, and that’s where CAE technology comes in.  Charles and Brian stepped in next highlighting their efforts in  recreating and subsequently addressing component failures with CAE analysis.

Stay tuned for more!

Mark