Interview with Diego d’Udekem Director of Sales and Operations at Free Field Technologies (FFT) – MSC Software Company
Diego, can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Sure, I am Diego d’Udekem Director of Sales and Operations at FFT – MSC Software Company, after doing my Masters in Electro-mechanics 2004 started working with Altran. Later in April 2005 joined FFT as Support & Project Engineer, and then I passed through Head of Engineering and Support. From February 2013, I am appointed as Director of Sales and Operations.
It is my pleasure to work with FFT since last 10 years, it is great experience to work with such a professional, active and creative group and all the activity related to sales and operations worldwide for constantly developing company.
Please tell us about FFT and its acquisition by MSC Software?
FFT was founded in 1998 by Jean-Pierre Coyette and Jean-Louis Migeot is a Belgium based company providing acoustics and NVH simulation software solutions for the automotive, aerospace and other industries.
In 2011, MSC Software acquired FFT. Bringing FFT together with MSC’s existing NVH solution family in MSC Nastran, positioned MSC as a powerhouse to deliver robust acoustics and NVH solutions to customers worldwide. Even after acquisition the FFT’s sales, support, and R&D departments remained unchanged working with the same staff. Being part of MSC group has helped us to cater larger customer base, enhanced our solutions, added value and offer related services in more regions.
What are the products offered by FFT?
FFT’s offers ACTRAN – the finite element software for acoustic, vibro-acoustic and aero-acoustic modeling. It is one of the best and most complete acoustic simulation tools available; it provides rich elements, material models, boundary conditions, solution schemes and high-performance solvers to users to solve their complex acoustic problems accurately.
ACTRAN is widely used in automotive, aerospace, audio, advance materials, telecom, IT, defense, energy and other industries worldwide. Along with the software we also offer a wide range of services including on-site and off-site consulting, training, technology transfer and contract research.
We also offer integrated Actran for Nastran solution that gives our users advanced features for mixing the best of both worlds and few specialized solutions like ACTRAN TM for turbo machinery, ACTRAN DGM for modeling noise propagation in complex flows and ACTRAN VI pre and post-processor for ACTRAN Suite.
We have released Actran Version 15 in Oct 2014 with lots of new features added; also take care of the customer requests for the requirement of particular features in every release.
How is Actran’s market in India, what is your strategy to establish it among the major CAE systems in India?
We’ve already had few customers from Automotive, Aerospace sector in India and received a lot of positive feedback from various companies and Government organizations. We are conducting seminars at various places in India to make people aware about our product, discuss a wide range of applications and show them how it can help them to make better products and improve the acoustic performance of their design.
We have our distributor in India and have great support from MSC Software India team to promote Actran in existing and new customers.
You can see in today’s event in Pune, as expected we got a good number of serious designers from various sectors looking for improving acoustic performance of their product, they liked our product, they are ready to try it and we are looking forward to serve them and support their success with our software.
How you take care of generating trained resources required to work on such specialized tools?
We conduct training programs for working professionals and corporate on request, conduct seminars, demos and hands-on workshops worldwide. Free Field Technologies regularly organizes training on each and every Actran module. Training may be arranged in FFT premises or at the customer’s site. Both standard and custom trainings are available. FFT also regularly organizes introductory courses on acoustics and other seminars on acoustic CAE.
We are offering Actran Student Edition to students and educators along with the supporting materials and online tutorials. We conduct live webinars, provide on -demand webinars on various topics and real industrial applications to educate our user community.
Any message to design professionals and DailyCADCAM users in India?
In India, we have seen our Actran community growing tremendously over the last several months. I appeal users from Automotive, aerospace, electronics, ship- building, defense sector to try Actran software suite for acoustic, vibro-acoustic and aero-acoustic modeling. Let us know the challenges faced in analyzing and enhancing the acoustic behavior of your products.
By Sachin Sachin R Nalawade, Editor, DailyCADCAM
