Advancing Simulation Maturity:
Industry Benchmarks, Priorities, Directions
Ora Research Letter on Digital Prototyping, Simulation & Analysis November 19, 2008
By Bruce Jenkins, CEO
In part because different manufacturing industries first engaged with simulation technologies at differing times and for differing reasons, what practitioners are doing today to make their use of the technology more efficient, effective and productive varies substantially from one industry to another. The figure below maps findings of our work to benchmark the simulation maturity of six major industries, and illuminates the directions being pursued by each industry’s practice leaders to move their organizations to the next level.
Industries mapped toward the upper right already use CAE early and continuously in product development. Their engineering cultures are heavily analysis-centric; digital simulation predominates over physical test during design excursions. For discipline leads and methods experts in these organizations, the focus now is on achieving tighter toolset integration, greater work-process automation, and institutionalization of solver overlay technologies such as for DOE (design of experiments), robust design and DFSS (design for Six Sigma).
Within industries in the middle of the map, CAE is widely used, but physical test data often remains more trusted than analysis results, by both engineers and management. However, many companies have come to understand this is a far from optimal situation, and are striving to move from test-bound engineering practices to a culture of analysis-led design. At automotive as well as off-highway manufacturers, the challenges center on making CAE usage more pervasive throughout product development, and advancing its use upstream to have greater impact on design exploration and refinement. [See, for example, "Early Simulation with Abstract Modeling at General Dynamics Land Systems."]
By contrast, in industries that fall toward the lower left of the map, CAE usage is often more opportunistic than strategic or institutional. Engineering cultures tend to be more comfortable with physical models, breadboards and workbench mockups than with simulation. But within these industries we did find initiatives to do more with simulation; these may begin with a chief engineer introducing comparatively easy-to-use, CAD-integrated analysis solutions to the product development group.
Of course there are outliers. In the medical device industry, for instance, makers of diagnostic imaging equipment are some of the world’s most sophisticated analysis users. But the many small and medium-size producers of insulin pumps, drug-delivery catheters, surgical equipment and the like tend, in our observation, to fit the characterizations above.
Similarly, among off-highway equipment manufacturers we found wide disparity between practice leaders and laggards. The least mature firms still rely heavily on handbook solutions and engineering sense checks for design exploration, and on physical prototypes for functional validation – predictably, the result is often over-engineered, materials-hungry products that barely keep pace with customer demand for greater fuel efficiency and performance, and with government-mandated emissions standards. But the most advanced are aggressively retooling their product development cultures to implement analysis-led design – leveraging simulation not just to make incremental improvements in existing products, but to deliver next-generation technologies that more than satisfy customer hot-button issues and regulatory requirements while leapfrogging their old-thinking competition.
Next time: How all this is driving demand for industry-specific simulation capability sets. | 
