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2013 Global Product Data Interoperability Summit Expands, Now Open to More Vendors

BA, NOC | April 3, 2013

The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA), Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC), and Elysium Inc. will hold the fifth joint Global Product Data Interoperability Summit (GPDIS), on September 9-12, at the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort in Chandler, AZ. The theme of this year’s Summit is “Enabling Productivity with Common Data Streams.”

The annual Global Product Data Interoperability Summit attracts experts and vendors from major industries, including aerospace, defense and automotive. (Photo: Business Wire)

The event functions as a communications hub for industry professionals to exchange ideas, solutions, and methods for improving product data quality and interoperability, with the goal of driving common standards adoption in global aerospace, automotive and other industries.

The growing popularity of the GPDIS has led to it being held two months earlier than in previous years, and in a larger venue to accommodate more vendors/sponsors. The event is held at no cost to industry professionals and supply chain partners in aerospace, automotive, related industries, and academia.

“This year we have more room to showcase an even wider range of the latest technologies that address the business challenges of CAD/CAM/CAE data exchange,” says GPDIS executive management team member and event organizer Ken Tashiro, Vice President and COO of Elysium Inc. Vendors/solutions providers are also sponsors, which provides their teams with an opportunity to present at the event (if abstracts are submitted before the June 14 deadline, and approved) along with exhibit booth privileges and accommodation discounts.

The GPDIS executive committee of Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Elysium will kick off the summit with early-bird sessions the first day, followed by three days of technical presentations.

"Fundamentally, being able to provide product information as needed by the end users, without having to do transformations and conversions, is the key challenge facing us going forward,” says Nancy Bailey, vice president of IT at Boeing. “This is why this summit is so important, as it creates a forum for us to come together and get deep into those technical discussions around what our options and alternatives are for actually moving the data to a position of information in a way that we can sustain and maintain going forward.”

“The Summit brings together industry leaders, suppliers, subject matter experts and individual contributors in an informal environment,” says Nate Nalven, director of engineering applications at Northrop Grumman. “We have found this setting to be ideal in generating meaningful ideas and affordable solutions, and architecting enterprise-strategic roadmaps for the greater good of industry overall.”

Notes Tashiro, “This event continues to improve and grow to reflect the demands of the aerospace and automotive industries. Since challenges in product design, manufacturing and visualization are constantly emerging, the annual GPDIS is a great level set for the technologists who attend and an excellent opportunity for solutions providers to both learn and present.”

The 2013 GPDIS website http://www.gpdisonline.com offers the following links: “Call for Papers”, “Summit Registration”, “Hotel reservations”, and a “Vendor Invitation”. Presentation abstracts must be submitted to charles.chen@boeing.com by June 14th.