Q. What changes have you implemented since your appointment?

A. In my role as Ansys Fellow and Lead Field Chief Technologist, I represent a unique capacity and access to bi-directional long-term trends in technology between global businesses and the Ansys team. Demystifying digital transformation specific to individual customers is a critical step to our sustained long-term relationship and mutual success. This demands continuous focus on the available technologies and the adoption threshold as well as the capacity of our individual customers who are often driven by the vision of their executives. So, aligning with key executives, both in government establishments and private/public enterprises was a key starting point.

We are also deeply focused on an adaptable ecosystem with Ansys and non-Ansys toolchains to enable customers from startups to government enterprises in establishing and executing their own Model-Based Systems Engineering roadmap. In our journey, we ensured clear visibility for our customers about their foreseeable needs and gains for model-based approaches from requirement analysis to final product delivery, operations, and services till the end of life. A key difference we established compared to any other current or previous approaches is the open collaboration paradigm through our open-sourced, publicly hosted APIs for all our capabilities. For customers, this is a key enabler of change management. It is also non-disruptive as it can support current practices to mature into future digitally smart practices while creating and maintaining full access and control of internal and supply-chain data.

Q. India is gradually emerging as the fastest growing country in Aviation, Defense, Space, and Drones. What kind of opportunities do engineering simulation software companies like Ansys expect to come by?

A. Ansys is engaged globally with many corporations in different industries. We recognize the variations in the utilization capacity of our customers. Accordingly, we serve the needs from startups to the global enterprises. While momentum in any of the areas you mentioned, namely, Aviation, Defense, Space, Electronics, Drones, Electric and Autonomous vehicles are fast picking up speed in India, globally these are active businesses and Ansys had been supporting these global innovators for more than two decades now. I welcome anyone to peruse the Ansys Advantage articles on these topics as available online. With quite mature set of solutions for these industries and related applications, we are poised to participate in this journey of the Indian innovators both in public and private sectors within the framework of accelerated development and scaling with digital engineering.

For aviation, defense, and drones, the main areas of Ansys’ impact are around system design and verification, electronics-related new technologies like 5G/6G digital design, optimization, verification, and safety-critical software including functional safety and cyber-security. Additionally, the defense sector needs digital mission engineering, operational planning, and mission assurance. Ansys has an industry-leading set of capabilities that are proven repeatedly in space and defense programs over the last few decades and are currently being extended with newer technologies like hydrogen propulsion, 6G, 3D ICs, SAR, ISAR, along with space technologies like orbital determination, space situational awareness, debris management, active threat detection and avoidance, and related advanced techniques.

Q. The Indian manufacturing sector is part of a global supply chain and nowadays, we talk about Atmanirbhar or self-reliance. What are the challenges faced by the Industry and opportunities available for Ansys?

A. India is making rapid progress in the Atmanirbhar or self-reliance initiative set by the Government of India. As we all know, self-reliance in Defense is being targeted through Make in India 1.0 & 2.0 initiatives, the cross-links to Electronics Systems, Communication, Information Technology as well as Skill Development / Education are very important. India’s defense sector also continues to pursue growth with new partnerships and collaborations with various global OEM companies that would like to co-create along with Indian companies. Self-reliance is driven by many different companies – ranging from government-owned defense labs & companies to academics & startups. Each one of them faces unique challenges in innovation and design.

There are distinct challenges in Space and Defense sectors. India has launched successful space missions including mission to Mars and the Moon. An important need now is to scale the program which will require public-private partnership.

Defense programs on other hand aim to bring self-reliance in technology and products. A simultaneous development of NTI (New technology Introduction) and NPI (New product introduction) requires a change in the paradigm of the product development process.

Another challenge for A&D is to keep up with global regulations, upcoming sustainability requirements and shared technology development. Many of the bi- and multi-national treaties play significant roles in promoting or deterring overall progress.

Academic programs in Tier-1, 2 and 3 in India have some scope to further boost skill development needed for the accelerated development in the aerospace and defense industries indigenous development needs.

Discussing the opportunities, globally speaking, many large and small aerospace and defense players have been Ansys customers for more than two decades. The applications span all physics, software, safety, and compliance domains. These on the one hand provide Ansys with the ability to increase knowledge and value for the customers, and on the other hand, remain an impetus for technology acquisition and growth for Ansys.

Several critical areas where Ansys can help this industry in India are essentially geared toward leapfrogging into the future rather than reinventing all the steps that other nations had to go through on their way to learning. Let’s list some examples of these technology areas to prioritize on:

Propulsion systems design and validation, A&D and space communication technologies, Imagery and detection systems design and validation, Digital operation and mission planning and engineering, Functional safety and cybersecurity Critical software applications, Hierarchical system design, performance, cost and , verification, , and finally, Skill development for sustained scalable development efforts.

In fact, in most of these areas, our current footprint with the Government Labs and OEMs are well aligned and rapidly evolving based on the capacity to absorb and utilize the veracity of our capabilities. For example, our engagements with the EU and Airbus on formation flights and autonomy are currently in the exploratory level of engagement in India. However, we are aware of private startups that are both active and interested in this state-of-the-art technology. This is a rich area for AI-ML driven development and verification of systems.

Q. What are some near future goals within India A&D industry that you are targeting for Ansys?

A. Our key goals are aligned with the industry requirements and occasionally, we enable the market-specific solutions to meet the evolution of the ecosystem. In India, alongside of design and verification, government is promoting private sectors’ participation in other areas, for example, manufacturing, virtualization, new technology development etc.

Aviation, Space, Defense and Drones: A sector highly dominated by continuous needs and application of new technologies from propulsion, electronics, controls, and software. All these are longstanding, world-leading solutions from Ansys used by all industry players globally. Apart from capabilities, Ansys is distinct in this space actively promoting collaboration with technology tools as substantiated by our open APIs on GitHub and support forum for this API ecosystem. We are a simulation leader and highly focused on unparalleled capabilities along with managing the modeling and simulation environments, process, and data, including custom reporting for decision support. In this industry segment we have demonstrated to both Space and Defense communities our ability to bring the latest 5G technologies in accelerating next-generation radar technologies like SAR and ISAR. We also enabled some defense laboratories to accelerate operational environment testing by virtualizing the so-called concepts of operation and mission engineering on computers along with the working models of their hardware in the loop.

Q. Can you throw some light on Ansys contribution to the development of skill capabilities in India?

A. I already touched upon this earlier. This is a very relevant question and an area that we focus on quite proactively. First, the current generation entering the job market, had been used to touch-screen technology since their childhood and expects the most useful and accessible technologies to inherit such user experience. Moreover, the implied expectation is learning-on-the-go and not so much traditional classroom teaching. Similarly, as laptops are becoming more powerful and cloud access from any user-machine is effortless, customers expect to utilize our technology in a ubiquitous environment with no major effort on their part. To meet such expectations at scale, Ansys has globally established what we call Ansys Learning Hub (ALH). ALH provides just-in-time content as well as all traditional classroom-type training content delivered both on demand as well as on schedule with and without tutors. We also provide customer-specific training rooms and content within the ALH framework. These are all customer-centric. We also have an elaborate forum for academic communities with special attention to partner universities and institutes. In India, we are also building specific skill development hubs as Center of Excellence with Universities. On December 14, 2022, honorable minister, Shree Rajeev Chandrasekhar, virtually inaugurated the IEEE-Ansys Center for Skill Development for Radio Frequency and Microwave in Bengaluru and also launched the Ansys Innovation Space (AIS) portal that provide virtual courses developed by Industry Experts.

AIS provides four distinct value propositions: Learning new skills, Certification for job searches, finding answers to technical questions, and learning technology and industry trends. We are collaborating with similar organizations to expand our regional outreach for scalable skill development in India. Additionally, we provide a host of free courses to modeling and simulation enthusiasts and practitioners of all maturity levels through the portal: https://courses. ansys.com/. We also continue to support many student competitions that are targeted to help students develop design and manufacturing skills. Ansys has also established a Center of Excellence at MKSSS’ Cummins College of Engineering for Women and at Hindustan Management Academy. Lastly, we continue to work with many scientific and industry bodies such as IEEE, SAEIndia Aerospace to deliver advanced training programs through workshops, webinars, and seminars.

Q. Is your customer innovation and design acceleration vision resonating well for India customers and industry?

A. Indeed, we are very pleased with the industries’ responses to our initiatives. There is a palpable acknowledgement that our approach, our readiness, and our vision align with both individual company’s and the government vision, plan and needs of the day and into the future. As a matter fact, we are described by many in decision-making roles as trend-setters and that leadership of Ansys in Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis domain is quite recognizable. We are invited to the key notes, plenary sessions, and special events to share our thoughts, vision, and progress routinely in forums like IEEE, SAE, CII, University forums, and conferences. In terms of business, and our internal metrics, a continued paradigm shift is very visible. We are very much excited to partner with Indian Space & Defense industry in this transformative journey.

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