By Karsten Theis
This year, PROSTEP is celebrating an anniversary that is not very common in the relatively young PLM (Product Life Cycle) industry. 30 years ago, PROSTEP’s initial focus was on topics such as STEP and CAD data exchange which evolved to include expertise in vendor neutral PLM integration. Today, Digital Twins, Digital Threads, Embedded Software, Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are also central to PROSTEP’s offerings and R&D investments. At its core, PROSTEP has always been about the central challenge of strengthening our customers’ ability to innovate by improving their digital continuity.
We are proud of what PROSTEP’s dedicated and experienced team members have achieved with great success over the years! PROSTEP has always managed to rapidly adapt to the continuous and dynamic changes in technology, markets and customer requirements. We listen to our customers and partner with them to develop the real-world solutions that they need today. Together with our customers, experienced employees, strategic partnerships with renowned research institutions and leading tool manufacturers, we have access to a veritable treasure trove of know-how, best concepts, methods, and technologies.
PROSTEP has established a unique position in the PLM market by offering vendor-neutral consulting, Enterprise-grade software products (true Commercial Off the Shelf software COTS), and customized software solutions. PROSTEP’s customers include large corporations such as automotive and aerospace OEMs, as well as numerous medium-sized companies. This results in an excellent overview of the individual as well as industry needs and requirements of the various participants in the product development process and throughout the entire product life cycle.
Our expertise ranges from strategy consulting to the development of architecture concepts and their realization through to the implementation of the necessary software tools.
PROSTEP sees itself as an end-to-end solution provider with three main focuses; we are a consulting firm, product provider and software development expert all in one! This positioning is very important to PROSTEP as only someone who has implemented a solution for a customer knows the “devil in the details” and can advise them on the design of their IT architecture and to navigate difficult challenges.
Next, only those who design the architecture of tomorrow with the customer will also learn something about their strategy for the day after tomorrow. Finally, only those who master the complexity of real data in real projects can build functioning solutions. The combination of business and IT expertise is the key for PROSTEP in the increasingly complex world of PLM. That is precisely the added value for our customers.
Of course, PROSTEP does not have a crystal ball and can’t 100% predict what the future will bring. We don’t know whether shared data spaces will become established or what impact the industrial metaverse will have on the development, production, and operation of tomorrow’s products. But we are working intensively on all these topics, and more, so that we can optimally support our customers on their journey into the digital future.
The same applies to the topic of artificial intelligence (AI), which has exploded on the world stage. PROSTEP is already realizing its first AI consulting projects; we have the first AI-supported PLM solutions on the market, and we are using our existing solutions to prepare PLM data for AI applications. AI is a key technology for us that we will use to build the PLM of tomorrow.
PROSTEP has big plans for the next (30) years: We will further expand our consulting business and, in particular, focus more on services related to software-driven products and AI; we will further develop our portfolio of software solutions into an integrated platform; and we will increase our international footprint.
PROSTEP’s employees have always been THE key to our success. We will therefore make additional efforts to continue to be an outstanding, attractive, and modern employer, both in the search for new team members and with a view to retaining the existing team over the long term.
Our corporate culture will continue to evolve and improve. One example is the generational change that was heralded last year with the appointment of Philipp Hasenäcker as a new member of the Management Board brings a breath of fresh air and new awareness for our organizational set-up that ensures that we remain dynamic and flexible and are optimally equipped for a great future for PROSTEP.
Yours Karsten Theis