We recently held our first Digitalisation Roadmap workshop, focusing on the ever-evolving and demanding Digital Engineering Environment. We spent almost 2.5 hours working with members of the automotive and academic sectors, as well as equipment and software providers.
Our Ice Breaker for the workshop involved asking the attendees to pick two images from around 100 – one to represent the current state (2020) of the automotive industry with respect to the digital engineering environment and one to represent the future (2040) state.
For the current state, only two photographs had more than one name attached to them. This one of a man heading towards a gap which needs to be jumped over was one of them. Interestingly, the two attendees that picked it had different reasons for doing so. One said that they felt like the man had started to run and was preparing to jump, but looked like he had, or was, stumbling. They felt like that was where the industry is – it understands it needs to make the leap in front of it, but is stumbling each time it tries to start off.
The future images showed a definitive consensus of the attendees, with 30% of them selecting the same image to represent where the industry will be by then. The image (below) shows the interconnectivity of buildings, road networks, cars, people, energy/power sources and the sharing of data between them all.
The commentary on this image from those who picked it followed the same theme – the sharing of data, complex information and interconnectivity of a car will be vastly more complicated than it is in 2020.
The ice-breaker was quite thought provoking – it showed the diverse thinking and positioning of the industry; there was little consensus on the current state with lots of opinions and ideas, all of which were relevant. It also demonstrated that there is a consensus of where the industry is heading – to an evermore complicated, connected and integrated world of transport and infrastructure.
It demonstrated the need for a unified position and structure for moving the industry forward; it’s time to start the move from planning for the great leap that is required, to making it.
If you’re interested in taking part in one of our future workshops, please express your interest via the form on our Roadmap page. Due to low number of spaces available, these workshops will be by invitation only.