Industry-Specific Solution Sets (Part 1):
Overcoming Constraints on Simulation’s Value
Ora Research Letter on Digital Prototyping, Simulation & Analysis December 5, 2008
By Bruce Jenkins, CEO
Most CAE software developers today target their messaging to the needs of specific industries. Some have taken the next step, packaging their technologies into industry-specific solution sets. Practitioners working to advance the simulation maturity of their organizations embrace this trend, our research suggests, and want to see it accelerate. For background see Advancing Simulation Maturity:
Industry Benchmarks, Priorities, Directions.
What are practitioners looking for? To find out, we distilled key business drivers for investing in simulation and analysis in each of a half-dozen major manufacturing industries. Then we investigated what constrains each of these businesses from getting fuller value from their simulation investments. Finally, to understand what can help overcome these constraints, we identified critical capabilities that each industry wants its future simulation work environment to support.
These findings are drawn from in-depth interviews and discussions with program managers, discipline leads and analysts at a range of manufacturers in North America, Europe and Asia/Pacific. The table below compares and contrasts what we found in three of the industries we studied. Contact us for more details of our findings in these and other industries.
| |
Simulation business drivers |
Constraints |
Future work environment |
|
Aerospace & Defense
|
- Manage ever-increasing product complexity and systems integration challenges
- Manage technical interactions with program partners, control technology/IP transfer
- Defense programs – meet objectives on time, on budget
- Space systems – cope with price pressures in commercial satellite and launch vehicle businesses
- Commercial aircraft – make new models more efficient, better performing, higher quality, better differentiated, more appealing to passengers
|
- Program schedules
- Limited availability of CAE discipline experts
- Need to make more efficient use of existing engineering staff and analysis tools through:
- Better CAE data and process management
- Better transfer of CAE data between tools at different levels of abstraction/resolution
- Better transfer of CAE data from one design stage to next
- Overlay tools/methods to exercise CAE software more efficiently
|
Focus on:
- Six Sigma
- Systems engineering
- Simulation process improvement
Enablers:
- DOE – Design of Experiments
- DFSS – Design for Six Sigma
- MDO – Multidisciplinary Design Optimization
- Robust design
|
| Automotive Powertrain |
- Shorten schedules
- Reduce development costs
- Boost product quality
- Innovate:
- Fuel efficiency
- Hybrid vehicles
- Better diesel engines
- Materials
|
-
Test-oriented culture
-
Shortage of trained analysts
-
Distrust of analysis tools for non-experts
-
Weak accountability of analysis function to program management
|
Focus on:
- Tools plus process-change initiatives to…
- Analyze more, test less – time and cost savings
- Analyze to identify failure modes better than test alone – drive quality up, warranty/recall expense down
Enablers:
- Knowledge capture & process automation tools
- Simulation data management framework
- Consulting services
- Process change support
- Help with people / cultural / organizational issues
|
Consumer Electronics
|
- Shorter product development cycles
- Increasing product complexity
|
- Shortage of expert analysts
- Shortage of time in program to make more use of analysis
|
Focus on:
- Better simulation data management
- Better management, encapsulation, reuse of simulation know-how
- More efficient correlation of simulation results with materials databases, physical test results, manufacturing process knowledge…
Enablers:
- Knowledge capture tools
- Process automation tools
- Simulation data management framework
- Broad line of simulation tools that work together:
- Solvers and meshers for structural, nonlinear, thermal …
- 1D and functional simulation
|
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