Below is an excerpt from a recent interview with SIMULIA‘s Director of Worldwide Industry Process Success, Adrien Mann, as he discusses how as a company, we are giving back to society at this concerning time. With our SIMULIA best in class simulation software, we have the ability to assess transient particle flow and particle tracking to help the world better understand the spread of disease in various environments. SIMULIA reveals the world, for the better.
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Q: What is your name and job title?
Adrien Mann: My name is Adrien Mann and I’m the Director of the Industry Process Success at Dassault Systèmes Simulia, and I’m responsible for all the workflows and technologies that we build for simulation following the equipment industry.
Q: What’s happening in the world right now.
Adrien Mann: Well, what’s happening in the world right now is something that I think most of the generations that are living on planet Earth right now have never dealt with. So we have this pandemic, which the death rate is really high, and that is pretty scary, and so we really have to you know, comprehend, and work with it it on an everyday basis. And, basically, you know, try to get back to normal, and well, fix the situation in some way.
Q: We’re just sort of talking about the world in general. How is the world gonna fix this? How are we gonna get back to normal?
Adrien Mann: That’s a good question. Well, I think there are several steps here. Going back to normal is probably not going to happen tomorrow. And it’s probably gonna be a… first, getting back to something that is more close- closer to normal than right now, where we are- we- most of us have sheltering home orders, and we have to stay home. So, I think of what we need to do first is to make sure that we’re safe. That is by making sure that wherever we live, as long as we don’t have a vaccine, make sure that as safe as possible, so we can keep, you know wander the Earth, and work, and live, without worrying about catching the disease, catching the virus, and I think, you know, moving forward, it’s going to be more about helping finding a vaccine. Finding a medication that’s going to help us to, well, move forward, really, you know, overcome the pandemic and go back to our normal life.
Q: Great. Now, obviously, doctors and scientists are going to be working on the vaccine. We know this. What are some things that businesses of all types are doing? How can tech help in the meantime while vaccines are being worked on?
Adrien Mann: Absolutely. On the tech side right now, in both the hardware and the digital side there are a lot of efforts ongoing to answer some of the- let’s say, the limitations that we have, regarding masks, regarding ventilators. So really working on shifting manufacturing power into building those missing assets to really help at caring for the population. And then also of course being able to understand how the disease is propagating, how we can make our environment safer, and that can be, you know, looking to various means, such as simulation, for example.
Q: Terrific. So, a lot of companies are probably doing this right now. They’re trying to make this better. They’re trying to use technology to make these things.
Adrien Mann: Yes.
Q: What are some difficulties that you think that some of these companies might encounter as they attempt to do this work?
Adrien Mann: Well, we are seeing two main issues here. The first one is that a lot of those companies are not by default manufacturers for ventilators or masks or things like this. So, they really have to transform in a very short amount of time. And this is really challenging, because, you have to adapt an entire factory layout, an entire engineering process towards suddenly building a product that was not your specialty before that. And I think that the second challenge that there is, is that, because of the confinement and because of the way we have to quarantine ourselves, and protect ourselves from the virus, a lot of the engineering processes of those companies are actually already disturbed by the fact that you cannot really access the factory. You cannot really access the office for engineering. So, transforming in these times is a very difficult thing to do. Not impossible, though.
Watch the full interview, below:
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Katie is the Editor of the SIMULIA blog, an expert in engineering and scientific communication, and a strategic digital marketer. Katie has a BA in English and Writing from the University of Rhode Island and a MS in Technical Communication from Northeastern University. She is also a proud SIMULIA advocate, passionate about democratizing simulation for all audiences. Katie is a native Rhode Islander but now lives just over the border in southeast Massachusetts. She is a true New Englander and loves sharing all the cool things NE has to offer. She enjoys a variety of hobbies including history, astronomy, science/technology, science fiction, true crime, fashion and anything associated with nature and the outdoors. She is also mom to a 4-year old budding engineer and two crazy rescue pups.