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ABHI KOLPEKWAR, VP & GM, Siemens Digital Industries Software, for Digital Verification Technologies: “We’re BREAKING THE BOTTLENECK of Verification Productivity Gap 2.0.” Verification of ICs, integrated circuits, is a critical qualitative element in electronics design development. It ensures that the design meets the specifications required for products to function correctly, today more paramount than ever to meet the exponentially growing complexity in the EDA space. As electronics become more ubiquitous in most products, circuits are becoming more functional, more mobile, more present, and more interactive. As a result, IC design verification face tough development challenges and a relevant question is: How do you streamline the process in the most efficient way possible?
An interesting answer comes with last week’s launch from Siemens Digital Industries Software’s new Questa One portfolio. Abhi Kolpeekwar claims that it redefines integrated circuit (IC) verification from a reactive process into an intelligent, self-optimizing system. Not surprisingly AI plays a leading role in the new portfolio: “Integrated AI-powered automation, predictive analytics and seamless workflow connectivity enable dramatic acceleration of verification cycles, reduce manual effort and boost productivity,”
Doubtlessly it is a welcome addition to the domain capabilities, now gathered in one portfolio. The company's Abhi Kolpekwar notes that within the framework of this portfolio, connectivity solutions, data-driven strategy, and scalability with AI are now combined to push the boundaries of the integrated circuit (IC) verification process and make engineering teams more productive. Questa One delivers faster engines, enables faster engineering and requires fewer workloads to support the largest, most complex designs from IP to System-on-a-chip (SoC) to Systems, and was developed with advanced 3D ICs, chiplet-based designs and software-defined architectures in mind.
“Questa One transforms the IC design process to address the verification productivity gap and solves the IC industry’s rapidly growing challenges associated with increasingly complex designs,” said Kolpekwar. “In fact, it leverages new technological advancements to deliver the fastest functional, debug and formal verification engines available, all combined with our application of AI.”
He further points out that Siemens has developed the portfolio in collaboration with industry leaders to develop this smart verification solution.
“Yes, Questa One breaks the Verification Productivity Gap 2.0 bottleneck, where the increasing complexity of technologies such as 3D-IC, chiplet-based designs and software-defined architectures is further exacerbated by increased security requirements, increased demand and consumption of security, increased capacity and sustainability requirements.”
But what are the multiple technical breakthroughs about? Speed, simulations, and integrations are keys - click on the headline to read the full article on PLM&ERP News.

MARK MOFFAT, CEO: ”Vi räknar dessutom med att lägga 50 % av R&D på AI under 2025.” Självförtroendet var på topp när affärssystem-utvecklaren IFS i förra veckan genomförde årets upplaga av bolagets stora användar-event IFS Connect 2025, på Quality Hotell Strawberrys konferensanläggning i Solna, utanför Stockholm. Det är satsningen på industriell AI, men också moln-framgångarna, som får upp stämningen på topp i bolaget.
Från scenen deklarerade chefen, Mark Moffat, att IFS uppbyggnad av inbäddad industriell AI utvecklat IFS Cloud och mjukvaruutbudet till marknadens starkaste: ”AI är som ett trollspö och vi är nu den odiskutabla ledaren på området,” hävdade han. Påståendet kan förstås diskuteras, men icke desto mindre fick han fick ett entusiastiskt mottagande från den rekordstora, 700 personer starka publiken.
Från scenen fortsatte AI-euforin. Norden-chefen, Ann-Kristin Sander, IFS CTO, teknikbasen Dan Matthews, och seniora VPn för produkt- och partner-strategi, Martin Gunnarsson, alla deras presentationer präglades av stark övertygelse. ”Det finns inga gränser för hur långt man kan komma med AI,” var känslan de förmedlade.
Klart är också att IFS vuxit kraftfullt med sitt fokus på sina sex specialområden: Industriellt inriktade affärssystem för flyg & försvar, energi, bygg & anläggning, tillverkning, tjänster och telekom. Men inte bara det, man har fått intressanta erkännanden från globala analytiker och kunder på toppnivå. Gartner utsåg t ex IFS till “Kundernas Val” 2024 i rapporten, “Voice of the Customer for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises.” Annat är den kraftfulla tillväxten 2024, där inte minst efterfrågan på industriell AI och molnet drev upp den totala omsättningen till knappt 1,3 miljarder euro, motsvarande, motsvarande ca 13,4 miljarder kronor. Liksom att investerarna tror på bolaget: När en av huvudägarna, EQT, nyligen sålde av en andel för 3 miljarder euro innebar det att IFS totala värdet i stort sett fördubblats på tre år till 15 miljarder euro (163 miljarder SEK).
Med detta i minnet och bolagets starka teknologiska utveckling inom AI- och molnet är det inte märkligt att målsättningarna fått en ny substans: IFS har det som behövs för att på allvar gå efter marknadsettan SAPs kunder. Bara under den senaste månaden har vi sett bra exempel på verktyg som ska locka till en övergång: Nya Nexus Black-konceptet för ett snabbare och förenklat upptag av AI inom industriella ERP-system, med speciallösningar för migration från SAP till IFS Cloud är ett bra exempel.
”Det som händer nu går snabbare än vad vi någonsin kunde tro,” konstaterar Moffat och tillade att IFS la 25 procent av R&D-investeringarna på AI 2025. ”Men i år blir det ännu mer, vi räknar med att lägga 50 procent av R&D-satsningen på AI. Därmed tar vi sjumilakliv på AI-sidan genom höga ambitioner i kombination med stora resuser.”
Ann-Kristin Sander höll med och pekade särskilt på utvecklingens explosivitet: ”Det som var en vision ifjol under Connect i Köpenhamn, är nu realiserat. Så fort går det.”
Men vad är det med IFS AI som får den att stå ut i konkurrensen? CTO Dan Matthews utvecklar saken i dagens artikel.
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CAE/"An AI SUPERCOMPUTING platform, powered by NVIDIA DGX systems trains future safety models.” Volvo Cars has in important aspects gained momentum in its digital simulations. A few months ago I reported on a breakthrough in aerodynamic simulations in a collaboration between Volvo and NVIDIA. By using a combination of NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs for the solver and CPU cores for meshing, the the total simulation time went down from 24 hours to 6.5. But the collaboration with NVIDIA has more to give, including Gaussian Splatting technology reducing simulation times from months to days.
Volvo Cars is using Gaussian splatting to develop safer cars. They can now synthesise incident data collected by the advanced sensors in its new cars, such as emergency braking, sharp steering or manual intervention.
”This allows us to probe, reconstruct and explore them in new ways to better understand how incidents can be avoided,” says Alwin Bakkenes (pictured), Head of Global Software Engineering at Volvo Cars. The advanced Gaussian splatting technology is in this respect used to create a large number of realistic, high-resolution 3D scenes and subjects from real world visuals. The virtual environment can be manipulated, for example, by adding or removing road users and changing the behavior of traffic or obstacles on the road - to generate different results. In short, the solution makes it possible to expose the company's safety software to all types of traffic situations, with a speed and scale that was not possible before. The technique allows Volvo’s engineers to develop software that works well even in complex, rare but potentially dangerous edge cases – and reduce the time it takes to expose the software to these cases, from months to days.
“We already have millions of data points from moments that have never happened that we use to develop our software,” Alwin Bakkenes said and continued: “Thanks to Gaussian splatting, we can select one of the rarer cases and explode it into thousands of new variants of the scenario to train and validate our models against. This has the potential to unlock a scale that we have never had before.”
A heavy point in the context is NVIDIA's technology. The new generation of fully electric cars, built on NVIDIA accelerated compute collects data from various sensors. An AI supercomputing platform, powered by NVIDIA DGX systems, contextualizes this data, provides new insights and trains future safety models.
The new EX90 model is the first Volvo car to be truly software-defined (SDV) – built on a centralized core computing architecture, enabled by the NVIDIA collaboration. The EX90’s core computing system is powered by an NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system-on-a-chip (SoC) capable of performing over 250 trillion operations per second (TOPS). But more is coming...
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Working in SAP's S/HANA in ERP and 3DEXPERIENCE from Dassault Systemes in PLM. Swedish medical technology company Mölnlycke Health Care has recently taken a big step forward on the digitalization side and when it comes to its business systems. This is through the deployment of a cloud-based system from SAP, a change that affects nearly 1,900 employees globally. The company is a world leader in its field with solutions that equip healthcare professionals around the globe with clinical material specialized in innovative solutions for wound care and surgical procedures.
When it comes to business systems, they have been working in SAP environment since 2000, while when it comes to product development, they work on Dassault Systemes' 3DEXPERIENCE platform. The latter is a state-of-the-art PLM platform that has meant a lot in terms of lead time savings within Mölnycke, which will be discussed in a coming article based on a presentation at PLM consultant TECHNIA's Innovation Forum 2024.
But it is on the ERP side that the company has now launched an upgrade to SAP's cloud-based solution, S/4HANA Private Cloud. The background is that Mölnycke has expanded considerably since the introduction of SAP around the turn of the millennium, which has created new needs for what the business system should be able to handle.
It was at the turn of the year 2024/25 that the decision was made to upgrade to S/4HANA Private Cloud, using the 'RISE with SAP' concept to accelerate continued digital development. RISE with SAP is a transformation set up that supports cloud migration with proven methodology, advanced tools and expert guidance.
Before the start of the project, Mölnlycke realized that much of the expertise surrounding the existing business system was in the hands of external service partners and to strengthen its own capabilities, the company has now chosen to invest in an internal skills upgrade to drive digitalization forward.
“Exactly, we are experienced SAP users and our business system already handles around half a million transaction events every day. However, we have noticed that much of the knowledge about what SAP can do for us has disappeared over time and therefore we have now chosen to invest a large part of the budget in a skills upgrade for our own employees. In this way, we secure our core competence in the long term,” says Mikael Björk, IT Manager at Mölnlycke.
It is noteworthy in this context that sustainability and digitalization efforts are at the center of the execution of the company’s mission towards its customers around the world. The IT department is organized around teams that take ultimate responsibility for solutions within different business areas, currently four: Wound Care, Operating Room Solutions, Gloves and Antiseptics. Mölnlycke’s current IT landscape is characterized by large COTS/SaaS platforms for ERP, CRM and PLM, which primarily support the internal core processes. In this perspective, they work according to agile development and DevOps methods, including end-to-end Software Delivery Lifecycle processes.
Initially, approximately 80–85 percent of existing processes will be moved to the new system – but what does the rest of the journey look like? How does AI come into play?
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PLM/"Vår MOLNET-FÖRST-STRATEGI är en topprioritet", säger RAINER EIDLOTH, på Schaeffler. När PLM-utvecklaren PTC förra veckan meddelade att en av företagets stora kunder inom fordonssektorn, Schaeffler, går från en lokal PLM-installation och istället hoppar på molntåget, var det ytterligare en bekräftelse på en av dagens viktiga PLM-trender: Det är molnet och SaaS PLM som gäller företag med ambitioner att snabbt utveckla konkurrenskraft på en marknad där de övergripande kraven handlar om snabbare produktutveckling, flexibilitet, skalbarhet och globalt samarbete i realtid. På samma sätt behöver alla som vill få ut det mesta av AI molnet som teknisk plattform.
För en tier 1 leverantör till fordonsindustrin, som Schaeffler – bolaget har intäkter på runt 200 miljarder kronor och cirka 115 000 anställda - är bakgrunden den explosiva framväxten av ett tekniskt nytt produktlandskap. Sättet vi tar oss fram med fordon av alla typer förändras drastiskt. Elektrifiering, mer autonom funktionalitet, en massiv övergång till mjukvara, SDV:er (Software Defined Vehicles) och elektronik är faktorer som ställer nya krav på denna aktör, som utvecklar och levererar några av de mest avancerade och differentierade lösningarna inom fordonsindustrin, inklusive motorer, transmissionslösningar, chassi och elektriska framdrivningssystem, med mera.
Resultatet för Schaeffler är nya attackvinklar i produktutvecklingsstödet och Rainer Eidloth, senior VP of Engineering Digitalization & IT, säger att övergången till vad molnet kan erbjuda är avgörande skäl bakom satsningen på PTC:s Windchill+.
"Som långvarig industriledare inser vi vikten av fortsatt transformation inom digitalisering för att leverera produkter i världsklass. Att accelerera produktutvecklings-processen och anta en moln-först-strategi är två av våra högsta prioriteringar," noterade Eidloth och påpekade att PTCs PLM-verktyg har varit nyckelkomponenter i produktutvecklingen under det senaste decenniet.
För PTC-kunder är Windchill+-plattformen ett bra svar på frågan om hur man mest effektivt tar de nödvändiga stegen i denna riktning. En nyckel i sammanhanget är SaaS PLM-upplägget, vilket innebär att användare har tillgång till samma konfigurerbara arbetsflöden, förändringshanterings-processer och BOM-funktioner, tillsammans med kontinuerliga uppgraderingar, friktionsfri användning av nya moduler och inbyggd säkerhet, som i de mest avancerade lokalt installerade Windchill-versionerna. Med ”plusversionen” får Schaeffler kort och gott en funktionsrik PLM-lösning levererad som en tjänst i molnet med flexibel tillgång till mjukvarufunktioner och skalbar infrastruktur (IaaS, Infrastructure-as-a-Service). Inte minst värdefullt med SaaS-modellen är att man kan få en helt uppkopplad digital tråd.
"Precis, värdena är många och vi är övertygade om att fördelarna med Windchill+ - inklusive samarbete, användarvänlighet och att alltid ha den senaste versionen med de senaste funktionerna - kommer att göra det möjligt för Schaeffler att accelerera sina produktutvecklingsprocesser och bygga vidare på sin position som branschledare", kommenterar PTC-chefen, CEO Neil Barua.
Men hur har PLM utvecklats hittills på Schaeffler? Och vad är kärnan i PTCs erbjudande och molnmodell?
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"Companies are often groping in the dark when it comes to the hidden climate costs of the AI revolution," according to the new Capgemini study. Generative AI is becoming increasingly popular, but its increasing use comes with a hidden cost: a growing climate footprint. The new Capgemini report reveals that many business leaders are aware of the problem, but few actually have control on how much their own AI bets contribute to emissions.
Estimates based on data previously shared by OpenAI about GPT-3 indicate that training a modern generative AI alone can consume as much energy as 5,000 households use in a year.
Capgemini’s new report “Developing Sustainable Gen AI” shows that almost half of decision-makers at organizations with active AI projects are aware that their use of the technology has contributed to increased greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, only 12 percent have investigated how much their AI investments contribute to increased emissions.
“But it’s not about disinterest,” says Caroline Segerstéen Runervik, Nordic Head at Capgemini. “The problem is that it is extremely difficult to obtain reliable data on AI’s environmental impact. Public information is often outdated and the tech giants are tight-lipped about their secrets.”
She believes that the difficulty in obtaining actual information about the climate footprint of AI is an important part of the explanation for the fact that only 20 percent of respondents in the survey include environmental impact among the five most important factors when deciding on AI investments. The report also highlights the fact that 74 percent of those surveyed state that they have difficulty finding reliable information due to a lack of transparency from technology giants and AI specialists.
“Here, the industry, together with decision-makers, has a lot of work to do to increase the opportunities for organizations to make well-founded and long-term sustainable decisions about investments in AI,” says Caroline Segerstéen Runervik.
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”Företag famlar ofta i mörkret när det gäller AI-revolutionens dolda klimatkostnader,” enligt Capgemini-studie. Generativ AI blir allt mer populär, men den ökande användningen kommer med en dold kostnad: ett växande klimatavtryck. En ny Capgemini-rapport avslöjar att många företagsledare är medvetna om problemet, men få har faktiskt koll på hur mycket deras egna AI-satsningar bidrar till utsläppen.
Uppskattningar baserade på data som OpenAI tidigare delat med sig kring GPT-3 pekar på att enbart själva träningen av en modern generativ AI kan konsumera lika mycket energi som 5000 hushåll använder på ett år.
Capgeminis nya rapport ”Developing Sustainable Gen AI” visar att närmare hälften av beslutsfattare på organisationer som har aktiva AI-projekt är medvetna om att deras användning av tekniken har bidragit till ökade utsläpp av växthusgaser. Samtidigt är det bara 12 procent som har undersökt hur mycket deras AI-satsningar bidrar till ökade utsläpp.
”Men det handlar inte om ointresse”, säger Caroline Segerstéen Runervik, Nordenchef på Capgemini. ”Problemet är att det är extremt svårt att få fram tillförlitliga data om AIs miljöpåverkan. Offentlig information är ofta föråldrad och teknikjättarna håller hårt på sina hemligheter”.
Att det är svårt att få fram faktisk information om klimatavtrycket från AI tror hon är en viktig delförklaring till att bara 20 procent av respondenterna i undersökningen inkluderar miljöpåverkan bland de fem viktigaste faktorerna när man beslutar om AI-satsningar. Rapporten lyfter också fram det faktum att 74 procent av de tillfrågade uppger att de har svårt att hitta tillförlitlig information på grund av bristande transparens från teknikjättar och AI-specialister.
”Här har branschen tillsammans med beslutsfattare ett stort arbete att göra för att öka möjligheterna för organisationer att fatta välgrundade och långsiktigt hållbara beslut kring investeringar i AI”, säger Caroline Segerstéen Runervik.

Reaching 12 MILLION ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS with data on over 1 BILLION ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS. What are the latest developments in technologies such as electronics, semiconductors, AI, robotics and manufacturing processes? Can a Design-to-Source Intelligence (DSI) network contribute to smarter design decisions in product development in, for example, electronics? Does the solution you are developing already exist? What is the demand and supply situation? What are the risks? Are you working with the latest technology?
Questions like these are of great importance to the millions of engineers and development teams working to realize innovative solutions related to electronics. This is something that Siemens Digital Industries has worked hard to find good answers to. The company has great ambitions in electronics and is currently at the forefront of the field, after a series of acquisitions and its own organic integration development.
Among the fundamentally interesting acquisitions when it comes to Design-to-Source Intelligence networks is Siemens’ Supplyframe and its DSI platform, which was purchased in 2021. This serves as an intelligence resource for the electronics industry and collects and utilizes billions of continuous pieces of information about design intent, demand, supply and risk factors. Among other things Supplyframe provides access to data on over 1 billion electronic components.
But it doesn't stop there. Siemens wants more and this week they announced the purchase of another player in the DIS field to strengthen Supplyframe's reach: Wevolver. This new combination brings together Supplyframe’s global DSI network of more than 12 million electronics engineers and procurement professionals with Wevolver’s large and growing global audience of hardware and software engineers.
“This powerful combination will unite Supplyframe’s Design-to-Source Intelligence (DSI) network with Wevolver’s global audience of hardware and software engineers, fostering an innovative engineering community and accelerating a new era of design-to-source intelligence that is data-driven and built for the speed of tomorrow’s manufacturing,” said Tony Hemmelgarn, head of Siemens Digital Industries Software.
Other benefits of the Wevolver acquisition include enhancing Supplyframe’s product portfolio and combining digital marketing and integrated campaign programs that include go-to-market support and content creation. Wevolver’s expertise comes from sources such as universities, technology companies, individual community members and the platform editorial team.
"The future of product development starts with smarter design decisions - and that means meeting engineers where innovation begins," said Steve Flagg, CEO and founder, Supplyframe. "With Wevolver, we are accelerating a new era of DSI that is collaborative, data-driven and built for tomorrow’s speed of manufacturing."
Wevolver’s CEO, Bram Geenen, pointed at what Wevolver can bring to Siemens table: “Our content has been accessed more than 1 billion times."
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Four flavors of SIEMENS SaaS-PLM/TEAMCENTER X. PLM in the cloud is a hot and the reasons are good from a user perspective, regardless of whether it is a large or small company. Unlike traditional, locally installed PLM systems, cloud PLM offers particularly valuable capabilities. As Siemens Digital Industries Softwares releases new versions of its PLM software for SaaS and the cloud, Teamcenter X, the company's senior VP of Lifecycle Collaboration Software, Frances Evans, points out scalability, flexibility and reduced infrastructure costs as fundamental values in this context. Working with SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), i.e. software and infrastructure as a service, has advantages that are so great that the sum of the value they add is hard to beat. Those are the overall values, but the needs look different nonetheless depending on things like company size, resources and what it is that you are developing products for. With what Siemens is now putting on the table, it has weighed these important aspects in its Teamcenter X offering.
"Exactly, the now launched expansion of Teamcenter X means that we continue to make SaaS PLM more accessible to companies of all sizes," summarizes Frances Evans (pictured), senior VP of Lifecycle Collaboration Software, at Siemens Digital Industries Software. "The new additions to Teamcenter X help even more customers quickly get started with PLM and then scale up to solve more business challenges with more of the Teamcenter portfolio."
Today, there are four Teamcenter X offerings, which with pre-packaged "out-of-the-box" functions make the solution adaptable to organizations of all sizes. "You can thus benefit from best-in-class SaaS PLM to digitally transform and drive innovation across the entire manufacturing industry, including process management and cross-domain functions that combine mechanical, electrical and electronics development and other advanced functionality," Siemens notes in the press material. Right or wrong – let’s leave it at that Siemens generally is top ranked by analysts when it comes to the Teamcenter software in PLM contexts.
So, today four variants of Teamcenter X are offered: • Teamcenter X Essentials is a slightly simpler variant, easy to implement and with low administration costs. • Teamcenter X Standard extends the capabilities of Teamcenter X Essentials and adds additional PLM functionality • Teamcenter X Advanced builds on the standard offering to add data management for electrical and electronic design integration and classification. • Teamcenter X Premium is built for companies that want to leverage the full capabilities of Teamcenter in a purpose-built solution.
What about Teamcenter X in real life then? We've looked at an example: Workhorse Group. The company manufactures electric vehicles for transporting goods from a distribution hub to the final delivery destination - the customer's door.
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“THE INDUSTRY has the data but TENDS TO DROWN in alternatives WITHOUT A CLEAR PATH FORWARD.” In a press release from the business system developer IFS, an innovation program, IFS Nexus Black, is launched today, which is intended to support and accelerate the introduction of AI solutions in industrial companies. The company's CEO, Mark Moffat, believes that the program offers a powerful alternative to traditional software suppliers through customized solutions with guaranteed scalability.
“Many companies are stuck between rigid business systems and niche AI solutions with no growth opportunities,” says Moffat. “We can guarantee fast, effective, and scalable development of the AI system. That's how we help our customers become industry leaders.”
Matt Kempson, senior VP and IFS Nexus Black chief, points out that AI capabilities, such as assistants and built-in tools, are standard today. What IFS is bringing to the table is a counterpoint to what Matt Kempson calls “the industry’s AI identity crisis.” It’s a response to a fragmented landscape where tools, speed, and frameworks rarely coexist effectively or are functionally scalable. “Nexus Black exists because our customers want industrial AI that is fast, contextual, and scalable—not just off-the-shelf,” Kempson said according to ERP Today. “They have the data, but they’re drowning in options with no clear path forward. Nexus Black allows us to take on the challenge of driving business value,” he adds.
IFS initiative is interesting because it comes at a time when recent analyst studies conclude that many AI projects are not achieving their goals. Respected analyst IDC points out, among other things, that unclear goals, insufficient data readiness, and a lack of internal expertise are slowing down many AI POCs, Proof of Concepts. POCs play an important role in this context as extremely useful strategy models for testing use cases: In short, you can test AI solutions without the risk of disturbing existing systems and functioning platforms.
This fits perfectly into a situation where the explosive pace of development has increased the number of pilots launched by industrial companies. In parallel, IDC points out that many companies today have developed something of a pilot fatigue. There is a certain resistance to seeking practical results, among other things because they do not believe that it will be enough lessons to learn from these experiments. It is also the case, according to new IDC research, that 88% of the observed POCs are not capable of large-scale deployment. For every 33 AI POCs that a company launched, only four were upgraded to production, IDC found. That's barely 13 percent.
"The high number of AI POCs but low conversion to production indicates the low level of organizational readiness in terms of data, processes, and IT infrastructure," IDC reports.
Not least in light of this, new models for introducing AI solutions - just like the one that IFS is now launching with the Black Nexus program, are very interesting for companies with the desire to productively move forward on the AI front. But what is more concrete that IFS Nexus Black offers?
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