Panel session report: demystifying digital engineering

We’ve all heard about the promise of Digital Engineering: how it will revolutionise every area of industry, making it more productive, more sustainable, and more responsive to customers’ and users’ requirements

And yet it can be a bewildering concept for many engineering companies: a jargon rich, offputtingly complex topic that’s often incorrectly seen as the sole preserve of large OEMs with deep pockets.

Earlier this year, in an effort to cut through the jargon and explode some digital myths, The Engineer - in partnership with the Digital Engineering Technology & Innovation (DETI) initiative - brought together a panel of OEMs, SMEs and digital engineering specialists to gather their insights on the practicalities of digital transformation.

The following report examines some of the key topics explored during this discussion.

Opening the session, National Composites Centre digital director Marc Funnell set the scene by introducing and outlining the aims of the DETI initiative, a two-year programme aimed at helping companies identify and develop the tools, technologies and processes they need to rapidly accelerate digital engineering capabilities (see boxout).