October 19, 2017
DATADVANCE Celebrates 7 Years Anniversary: Path from Airbus R&D to international software business
In July 2017, DATADVANCE released the new version of its flagship software pSeven — a platform for data analysis and optimization. Despite being quite a young company (this year it turns only seven years), DATADVANCE has already established itself as a reliable partner in various industrial markets. The offered solutions are widely applied in the largest high-tech companies in European, CIS and Asian countries.
Company
DATADVANCE team is made of young, talented and enthusiastic mathematicians and software engineers who managed not only to develop an innovative world-class software solution in such a short period but also to turn it into a commercial product and to enter the global engineering software market.
DATADVANCE team
The history of the company traces back to projects for Airbus Group (EADS at that time). In total, they implemented more than 20 computational simulation and data analysis projects.
By 2007, it became clear that within different projects, many similar mathematical problems related to data analysis and optimization were solved and soon it was decided that there was a need to develop a standalone consolidated algorithmic software-based library providing modern, effective and comprehensive methods to solve such problems.
The first version of this library named pSeven Core (MACROS at that time) was released in September 2009. Originally pSeven Core meant to be an internal instrument of Airbus. But both developers and partners from Airbus quickly realized that it was also possible to create a full-fledged commercial product that would be valuable not only for Airbus but also for many other industry actors. The decision to set up DATADVANCE company came out in 2010. Private individuals, including pSeven Core developers, and Airbus Group became the founders.
According to many consulting companies, France is the best country for startups. Innovative technologies here are widely used in the largest industrial enterprises, and the level of openness to innovation and investment is very high. Thus, cooperation with Airbus at an early stage enabled to develop and implement pSeven Core in the most advanced global industrial sectors that already had vast experience of implementing such technologies. One of the results achieved due to the implementation of pSeven Core at Airbus was design time reduction by 10% (in average) in all the departments.
In 2016 as a part of Airbus venture development strategy, the founders of DATADVANCE redeemed the company's shares, after which Airbus left the structure of shareholders. Since then DATADVANCE became a totally independent Engineering Software editor, which created an additional push for its further development.
pSeven development process
Operating results of the company on that transition year were recognized at the highest level: DATADVANCE received an award from the International Union of Railways (UIC) in the "Productivity" category. The same year company’s software solution was awarded the first prize at the largest industrial exhibition "Industry 2016".
The company has an operational office and a strong R&D team in Toulouse, France. DATADVANCE solutions are available worldwide through local offices and a reseller channel.
Technology
pSeven is a software platform for data analysis, design space exploration and predictive modeling. It supplements existing design capabilities of the engineering team and makes it possible to integrate different engineering software, multidisciplinary optimization algorithms and data analysis tools into a unified workflow to simplify design decision-making.
Interface of pSeven platform
The platform can be used by all members of the product development team at all stages of its life cycle. pSeven allows decreasing the time required for engineering calculations from several weeks or even months to several days. Its application during early design stages enables to reduce drastically lead time and cost at further stages.
pSeven provides not only seamless integration with already installed engineering software but also a user-friendly design space exploration environment thanks to the automatic selection of best-in-class optimization and data analysis algorithms provided by SmartSelection technology. As a consequence, engineers can now apply advanced optimization and data analysis algorithms that were previously reserved to high-level mathematical experts.
Implementation of pSeven also allows eliminating many difficulties arising during optimization processes, such as lots of input parameters, non-linear constraints, noisy behavior of objective functions, heterogeneous input data, etc.
pSeven is based on advanced proprietary algorithms that make it fit to any industry – from aerospace and automotive to turbomachinery, biomedical and pharmaceutical industries.
There are many examples of highly complex engineering problems solved with pSeven. Here are just a few:
Aerospace:
- Multi-objective aircraft family optimization at early design stage
- Multidisciplinary optimization of heavy cargo aircraft wing
- Finding ISS optimal propellant maneuver algorithm
Automotive:
- Prediction of fatigue stress loads of helicopter’s components and estimation of the remaining time of their smooth operation depending on flight parameters configuration
- Predicting lift and drag for a Formula 1 car
- Reduce of identification time of interaction type of tire with a racing track for Formula 1 car
- Optimization of bus suspension beam geometry and mass
Turbomachinery:
- Multistage steam turbine gas path optimization to increase overall efficiency
- Creating approximation model for a 10-stage compressor to accelerate calculations
Transportation:
- Maximizing uniformity and air flow rate of heat pipe cooling for a high-speed train
- Optimization of hydraulic dampers to minimize rail wear
pSeven application area is almost boundless because it is a multidisciplinary tool that is efficient in any field where data analysis and optimization algorithms can be applied. For example, today active research is carried out in the field of predictive maintenance. Also, a number of projects have been implemented in financial sector and biotechnologies.
pSeven is already used by the leading world companies such as Airbus, AREVA, TOTAL, IHI, Michelin, Toyota and other high-tech companies in aerospace, automotive, shipbuilding, energy and other industries.
Visualization in pSeven
Perspectives
DATADVANCE continues to develop new mathematical algorithms and methodologies inside pSeven to deliver its customers the most high-performing functionality and ensure effective data analysis and optimization. The development is carried out in close partnership with the leading scientific centers and high-tech enterprises all over the world.
Today DATADVANCE has two main vectors of business development. The first one is to extend its footprint in the existing markets in European, CIS and Asian countries. The company actively develops sales channels through software distributors and business partners. The second aim is to enter new markets in North America and the Pacific Region.
Prognostic Health Management (PHM) is also one of the priority areas for pSeven development in the near term. The more and more sophisticated equipment of industrial companies requires constant monitoring and regular maintenance. Maintenance and repairs can cost up to two-thirds of all production expenses. Due to the analysis of data accumulated during the equipment operation, pSeven allows predicting the probability of a particular part failure with a high degree of accuracy and shifts strategy from planned to prognostic maintenance which significantly reduces expenses and increases the reliability of operating systems.
In addition, the company cooperates with leading technical universities worldwide in the field of joint research and development of design optimization projects for industrial companies, as well as joint training of highly qualified specialists.
Sergey Morozov, President of DATADVANCE SAS & General Director of DATADVANCE LLC
"DATADVANCE considers the introduction of pSeven to the educational processes of technical universities and forming a generation of engineers skilled in advanced data analysis and optimization technologies one of the company’s priority tasks," commented Sergey Morozov, CEO of DATADVANCE.
DATADVANCE specialists take part in the largest scientific, industrial and IT conferences all over the world that allows keeping pace with the current trends and upcoming technologies and being at the forefront of the simulation, optimization and data analysis technologies.
The community of simulation and optimization specialists is evolving together with the technologies into a truly cross-industry and multi-skilled global society with its unique perspectives, problems, and solutions. DATADVANCE has become an integral part of this community and continues to develop advanced technologies implemented in pSeven.