inpro has made important pioneering achievements on the way to an industrially usable forming simulation. The developments started in 1985 with the aim to reduce the time and financial effort in tooling for sheet metal deep drawing processes. At that time, no industrially applicable program for the simulation of sheet metal forming existed. The prevailing opinion was that sheet metal forming could not be simulated. inpro took up the challenge and developed the deep drawing simulation program INDEED. After successful completion of the pilot phase, a first prototype for productive use was delivered in 1991, which was to firmly establish deep drawing simulation. In 1992, the use of INDEED started at Volkswagen in method planning and later also in toolmaking. With the version INDEED 5.0 the extension of the prototype was completed in December 1995. Essential algorithms in the areas of kinematics/element, contact/friction and material modeling were developed by inpro and implemented for the first time.

Thanks to the permanent increase of the prediction quality, the forming simulation could be introduced area-wide as a standard process in the production planning. Leading providers of modern simulation software – e.g. the companies AutoForm and ESI – are today long-term development partners of inpro.

“In the last three decades, inpro‘s innovation work has played a decisive role in shaping production technology progress in the automotive industry at many points. For thyssenkrupp, for example, the developments in forming simulation, knowledge management, material flow simulation and testing technology have been of great importance. inpro has identified new ways of reducing production costs and increasing product quality which have been successfully implemented.”

Prof. Dr. Rolf Geiger, longstanding thyssenkrupp representative on the inpro project committee