Prostep ivip is an association with its headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany. Founded in 1993 as the ProSTEP Association for the Promotion of Product Data Standards and later renamed to ProSTEP iViP Association in 2002, and since May 2017 the association's name has been written as "prostep ivip". Prostep ivip is a globally active, independent association of 180 member [citation needed] companies from industry, IT and research. It is an industry-driven association and its main focuses are on the digital transformation in product creation and production. By designing digital transformation in the manufacturing industry prostep ivip defines and aggregates the requirements of manufacturers and suppliers, intending to define standards and interfaces primarily for the digitalization of the entire product creation process – from idea to implementation.

prostep ivip association
Formation1993
TypeAssociation
PurposeDigitalization
HeadquartersDarmstadt, Germany
Membership
180 Companies
Dr. Henrik Weimer (Chair of the Board)
Key people
Dr. Alain Pfouga (General Manager)
Websiteprostep.org

History edit

After the end of the ProSTEP Initiative of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (German acronym: BMW), the ProSTEP Association was founded in 1993. Leading IT managers at BMW, Bosch, Continental, Daimler, Delphi, Opel, Siemens, Volkswagen and 30 other companies realized that the development of modern processes for efficient product data management was crucial to ensuring the ability of German companies to compete in the global marketplace and that they can address their common aims at best when joining under the neutral umbrella of an association.[1][2]

The starting point for this endeavor was the joint development of the STEP data format (ISO 10303). In 2002, it merged with the initiative "Integrated Virtual Product Creation (German acronym: iViP)" of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (German acronym: BMBF), which led to a massive scope extension. Up to today, the prostep ivip association remains committed to developing new approaches to end-to-end process, system and data integration for its members and providing digital support for all the phases of the product creation process.

Organization edit

40% of today's 180 member companies in prostep ivip are manufacturing companies (manufacturers and suppliers), 40% are IT companies and service providers and 20% are research institutions and other standardization bodies.[3] This tripartism is also reflected within the by-annually elected board of the association: one representative of the manufacturers, one of the suppliers, one of the IT and one of the research institutions.[4] Prostep ivip's Technical Programme, with its currently over 20 running project groups, is governed by the Technical Steering Committee (TSC).[5]

Cooperations edit

Prostep ivip maintains and continuously expands its network toward like-minded organizations. Examples for these organizations are AIA, ISO, OMG as well as associations like the French GALIA, the Japanese JAMA, the US-based PDES, Inc., the German VDA .

Publications edit

ProSTEP iViP publishes Standards, Recommendations, White Paper and Best Practices together with its partner organizations. For example:

Events edit

Each year in spring prostep ivip conducts one of world's largest neutral PLM Congresses: the prostep ivip symposium.[9] Beside this, it invites to smaller topic-specific events and Webinars.

References edit

External links edit