Dassault Systèmes is a software company’, says Marc Overton, ‘creating virtual twin experiences of the real world. We provide our global client base with collaborative virtual environments to imagine sustainable innovations. That’s what we do, and that’s our core business.’
With annual turnover of in the region of €6bn, the creator of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is not just ‘a software company’, but one of the biggest in the world, serving over a third of a million customers in more than 150 countries. As managing director of Dassault Systèmes Euronorth, Overton’s territory stretches across ten countries from Ireland to Finland, including the Baltics, Nordics and Benelux. From this position he can clearly identify challenges and opportunities emerging across the region.
Overton, now in his second year with the company, says that he’s excited about trends in a virtual technology landscape in which ‘people are waking up to the power of digital twins becoming virtual twins and entering the mainstream.’ Coming from a telco technology background – ‘I’ve been connecting machines for 30 years’ – he’s seen how network and software engineering have operated in the past as discrete functions. Today, it is ‘fantastic’ to witness engineering ‘morphing into more of an enterprise capability where everything is integrated as part of an ecosystem. It is a huge opportunity for a company like Dassault Systèmes.’
Reflecting on the sustainability value of designing in the virtual world, Overton says that in the twenty-first century it’s hard to ‘comprehend why some businesses are still not using digital tools to model, simulate and stress test their products before they go anywhere near manufacturing; why they are burning fossil fuels and punching holes in the atmosphere. I just don’t understand it.’ His environmental position ‘goes to the beating heart of what Dassault Systèmes is all about: sustainability at a broader organisational level. Making sure to embrace it in the business model in a seamless way. It’s a more competitive way to operate, and has a business benefit as a result.’
What attracts Overton to the virtual world of simulation, modelling, digital and virtual twins is that it represents working on the frontier of a ‘completely different way of designing, building and integrating products.’ Up until ‘not that long ago’ he explains, designers would make physical models of ‘a car of a piece of industrial equipment, put it into production, make adjustments to it as you went along, and then in-life it would operate in a slightly different way’. To manage this type of process at scale and pace was inevitably constrained by the manufacturing capability at hand. ‘But now you can model and simulate in the virtual world so much quicker’. Overton illustrates his point by explaining how ‘by using AI you can model a baseline for a complex vehicle in a matter of a quarter of an hour instead of two or three years. That’s powerful. It’s CAD on steroids.’
But it’s not just about the product design and delivery: ‘A virtual twin of your enterprise can become the playground where you can see how it handles any range of scenarios you throw at it. That speeds up the iterations and allows you to do things in a sustainable and cost-effective way that would in the physical world cost an awful lot of money and time. I think that’s where the real value is. It is changing the way we build and operate products, and it is touching every element of society.’
Dassault Systèmes is present in classical industry sectors ranging from industrial equipment to infrastructure, energy and materials, and from marine and offshore to aerospace and defence. ‘These are significant addressable markets for the transformative benefits of our mature solutions. Within that we are branching and diversifying into smart cities, life sciences and healthcare.’
Overton’s vision is always to look beyond simply collecting data and to consider ‘what you actually do with it. You’ve got to learn from the machine so that you can do the iterative changes for the next set of machines.’ He explains how this feedback mechanism applies in a military tank. ‘It’s a machine. A cross between a tractor and a piece of industrial equipment. But having a digital twin of that tank allows you to scenario plan, mission thread, make predictions about when that tank needs to be serviced as opposed to bringing that tank back every six months on a rota. And we see this in other forms of industrial equipment: understanding predictive maintenance is important, otherwise you’re just sending out engineers on an ad hoc basis.’
The automotive sector is ‘changing at pace’ and has potential to reap big rewards from operating in the virtual space. Dassault Systèmes is working with Jaguar Land Rover, who embody ‘an example of the future of manufacturing and product design’. At this end of the market, pressure on accelerating time-to-market while maintaining quality, especially in the electric vehicle sector, ‘is forcing a completely different approach, with virtual twins seen as an enterprise tool to create a single version of the truth across all disciplines. At the end of the day it’s all about competitive advantage, which means engineering is becoming more output driven. Business KPIs that haven’t previously driven engineers are now clearly aligned to engineering tools.’
In the energy sector Overton says that he’s seeing ‘a lot of activity not just in renewables, but in nuclear too. Small Modular Reactor (SMR) design benefits from modelling which is a game-changer for the industry.’ Aerospace and defence is driving investment, ‘especially in the light of the war in Ukraine. There’s a huge amount of innovation around complex sixth-generation systems, in both submarines with AUKUS and GCAP fighter jets. These systems are all using model-based engineering techniques that are now very much part of defence.’
As with all multinational organisations, Dassault Systèmes is having to address a mixed global outlook ‘accelerated and exacerbated’ by international conflict, pandemic, supply constraints, changes of governments, unpredictable regulatory positions and stagnating economies. ‘Even though some countries in Euronorth are remote from these events,’ says Overton, ‘others have borders with Russia, and so they still resonate. They have ramifications for any country trying to build a path to self-sustainability.’ On the upside, Overton is impressed by northern Europe’s unquenchable desire to innovate. ‘We have some of the most innovative countries on the planet. Whether that’s in EV, green steel or small nuclear reactors, there are huge amounts of innovation.’
Overton says that from a Dassault Systèmes perspective he remains optimistic about 2025, while recognising the need to factor in security, energy and economic headwinds that impact commercial strategies. But, along with these concerns comes the opportunity to increase resilience by ‘embracing the virtual world. We need to remember that while there is no Planet-B, there is the virtual Planet-V. That should drive the way we do business.’
This article was originally published in The Engineer's 2025 Tech Trends supplement in which key commercial partners offer their take on the technologies that will shape the year ahead.
For more on Dassault Systèmes visit: https://www.3ds.com/
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