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Regulatory News:

ESI Group (Paris:ESI), leading innovator in Virtual Prototyping software and services for manufacturing industries, announces the signing of a long-term strategic partnership with PARC, a Xerox company and renowned provider of custom R&D and technology solutions to Global 1000 companies and government agencies. The partnership initially focuses on expanding and industrializing PARC’s advanced research project on Fault Augmented Model Extension (FAME), initiated with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The partnership encompasses system reliability modeling, system safety assessment, predictive maintenance, and condition-based maintenance. These capabilities will come to strengthen the already existing ESI solutions dedicated to helping industrial manufacturers overcome engineering issues related to complex cyber-physical systems.

As today’s industrial systems incorporate increasingly complex hardware and software sub-systems, an integrated model- and data-driven approach has become essential to address design, validation and operational issues throughout the system design and operations cycles. Over the years, ESI has been developing coherent and integrated virtual prototyping solutions that enable industrial customers to virtually manufacture and evaluate product performance in different environments and use cases. Today, ESI extends its proposition to smart virtual prototyping; giving its customers the ability to animate their virtual prototypes and use the latest technologies, including big data analytics and machine learning, to accurately predict and manage product operational performance from an early stage.

ESI’s partnership with PARC marks the continuation of ESI’s strategic investments in system simulation. Indeed, in 2013, ESI acquired the cloud-based system design specialist CyDesign Labs, based in the Silicon Valley, and more recently the German company ITI GmbH, developer and vendor of SimulationX, the leading Modelica-based system simulation application in the field of System Modeling of cyber-physical systems. ESI has also complemented its data-driven system analytics capabilities by acquiring earlier this year Mineset Inc., specialized in web-based visual analytics and machine-learning and also based in the Silicon Valley. The research projects conducted in collaboration with PARC will accelerate the development of hybrid virtual prototyping and data-driven analytics solutions to maximize the useful and operationally reliable lifecycle of the products developed by ESI’s clients

Tolga Kurtoglu, Vice President and Director of the System Sciences Lab (SSL) at PARC, remarks: “Industrial manufacturers want to minimize the cost of complex systems, while maximizing performance. Design teams need to be able to quantify reliability and mitigate risk at the earliest phase of the process. We will work with ESI in partnership to help customers identify problem areas, gain insight, and quantify the impact of component failure through time and use of a manufactured system’s lifecycle. Mature and complex industries, including transportation, aerospace, defense, and energy, will benefit from our FAME project, and we are thrilled to work with ESI Group to bring these capabilities to customers around the world.”

Fadi Ben Achour, Electronics Business Development VP at ESI Group, comments on the long-term strategic partnership between ESI and PARC: “We are honored that such a highly regarded organization as PARC, with extensive expertise in system diagnostics, prognostics and condition based maintenance, has chosen ESI to industrialize one of their breakthrough technologies.” He continues: “Building on our existing expertise, the results from research conducted at PARC will enable ESI to deliver industrial solutions to answer system level challenges and to leverage the data generated by our customers systems during operations. Of course, we are also excited by the impact on our efforts to build a strong eco-system in San Francisco Bay Area and its hyper dynamic and innovative Silicon Valley."

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About ESI Group

ESI Group is a leading innovator in Virtual Prototyping software and services. Specialist in material physics, ESI has developed a unique proficiency in helping industrial manufacturers replace physical prototypes by virtually replicating the fabrication, assembly and testing of products in different environments. Today, coupled with Virtual Reality, animated by systems models, and benefiting from data analytics, Virtual Prototyping becomes immersive and interactive: ESI’s clients can bring their products to life, ensuring reliable performance, serviceability and maintainability. ESI solutions help world-leading OEM’s and innovative companies make sure that their products will pass certification tests - before any physical prototype is built - and that new products are competitive in their market space. Virtual Prototyping addresses the emerging need for products to be smart and autonomous and supports industrial manufacturers in their digital transformation.

Today, ESI’s customer base spans nearly every industry sector. The company employs about 1100 high-level specialists worldwide to address the needs of customers in more than 40 countries. For more information, please visit www.esi-group.com/

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