Highlights of the technical work program Highlights of the technical work program The technical work program was of course also domi- nated by video conferences and on-line meetings in 2020. However, the change in the way work was performed within the projects – virtual meetings instead of face-to-face meetings – worked very well. In most projects, the frequency with which project meetings were held actually increased, although the meetings themselves were usually shorter. The work performed led to numerous results, some of which are already available as publications in the prostep ivip Association's media library. The coronavirus pandemic did not, however, prevent the Association from launching work on new topics, including the Collaborative Systems Engineering (CSE) checklist project, which is being carried out together with the VDA Digital Product Development (DPE) working group. The aim is to revise the SE check- list (VDA 4961/3) from 2013, with future focus placed on collaboration between partners in the context of systems engineering. Interviews with experts were conducted, new CSE collaboration models were identified and relevant use cases in collaborative systems engineering were developed. The results will be documented and made available to industry as early as mid-2021. This year, the technical work program also focused on the topic artificial intelligence. With the "AI Marketplace" project, prostep ivip is for the first time actively involved in a publicly funded research project as a consortium partner. The project will be receiving 11 million euros in funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) over its duration from 2020 to 2022. Product engineering in particular is seen as offering great potential for the industrial appli- cation of AI. The objective of the AI Marketplace is to close the gaps that exist between industrial application and AI development. Easy-to-use individualized solu - tions will be made available to end users. AI solution providers will have ready access to customers. With a wealth of product engineering (PE) know-how, prostep ivip's prime focus in 2020 was helping develop a PE reference process. It is based on the V-model and the 4-cycle product development model according to Prof. Gausemeier and represents a 150% overview of the process steps, activities, methods, tools and artifacts needed in product engineering. In order to identify industrial challenges throughout the product engineering process, the prostep ivip project groups were asked to provide information about the challenges being faced, and this information was incorporated in the publicly funded project. The Integrated Collaboration Framework Forum (ICF Forum) was also founded in 2020, with the aim of establishing an interdisciplinary MBSE support frame- work to enable collaborative system development along the V-model based on linked data principles. The objective is to use defined methods, capabilities, data models and technologies to create a blueprint for a flexible federated tool landscape along the V-model by the end of 2022. One of the last face-to-face meetings held in 2020 was a cross-project meeting with representatives from the JT WF/IF, CAx-IF, PDM-IF, LOTAR, 3D MDM, PSM, SysML and ReqIF working groups, which was initiated by the Digital Data Package (DDP) project group. The aim of the DDP work group is to develop a data exchange format that supports the collaborative, model-based development of products/systems, which makes possible the cross-enterprise and cross- domain exchange of product data and gives due con- sideration to end-to-end configuration management. The availability of such a data format, called a "digital data package" (DDP), makes it possible for companies to create a minimal digital thread based on linked data exchange standards, thus enabling them to link and exchange the technical data of a digital twin. If this objective is to be achieved, it is of course vital that there be an intensive exchange of information and ideas with other project groups. This exchange conti- nued throughout the year with the aim of linking the various formats and then presenting them in a uniform manner. The project groups that are working on the topic vehicle electric system development (Vehicle Electric Systems WF and ECAD IF) published a revised version of their recommendation, PSI 21 / VDA 4968, in 2020. This publication marks the next major step towards a consistent and complete model of the physical net- work of vehicles and the associated data. The content is based on the VEC specification version 1.2.0. The ECAD Wiki has been completely redesigned. This is 8 prostep ivip Annual report 2020