Most manufacturers would be hard pressed to design reliable, high-quality, and cost-effective products without engineering simulation tools. Tools such as multi-body dynamics, structural analysis, vibro-acoustics, fatigue life analysis, fluid dynamics, and modal analysis generally provide the only practical way to identify and fix potential problems early in development, evaluate alternatives, optimize performance, and study product characteristics with greater speed and detail than is otherwise possible. Indeed, simulation has become an indispensable part of developing and delivering complex products.

Analysis results and the processes that go into simulation-based product development are part of a company’s intellectual capital and are valuable corporate assets. Information—software used, modeling details, problem set-up, iterations performed, decisions made, approvals, workflow, and responsible parties—is critical and contributes to improved on-going decision making. To leverage this information most effectively, it needs to be carefully managed to enable reuse to and form the basis for establishing consistent and time-saving best-practices.

Facing Significant Challenges
 

Unfortunately, most companies never properly archived, organized, nor managed effectively much of this valuable simulation information. Often, it is destroyed or lost at the end of the project, buried in obscure files, or locked away in someone’s head. So when data is needed later, considerable time must be spent finding files or laboriously reconstructing them. Even within the same project, simulations executed in the early conceptual stages may be long forgotten when problems occur near the end of development or after products are manufactured. In the worst case, this critical infor-
mation may be lost forever when the originator leaves the company or is otherwise unavailable.

Most companies have no formal system in place for effectively archiving simulation data and replicating simulation processes across the enterprise. Indeed, the area of simulation and analysis has been largely ignored for many years in terms of its integration into the broader enterprise. Investments in simulation have typically been for development or acquisition of focused technologies to be used by specialists so they can more precisely analyze the performance of alternative product designs for improving performance, reducing manufacturing and support costs, validating compliance, etc. In many companies, simulation and analysis have generally been treated as something of a “black hole” within the overall product development organization. Simulation investments typically have not focused on linking simulation more effectively into the broader enterprise.

Part of the difficulty in effectively managing engineering simulation is that the processes generally produce huge quantities of data—far larger than typical design files. The size of analysis files has increased considerably in recent years as the scope of simulation has expanded to include multiphysics applications, which account for the interaction of two or more coupled phenomena including fluid-structure interaction and thermal-mechanical loading.

The impact of not managing simulation data and related processes can be significant. Without doing so, there is no straightforward audit trail to prove how analyses were performed. Also, there are no recorded procedures for subsequent similar projects, forcing analysts to waste time re-inventing the process each time. Problems with inefficiency and inconsistency are magnified when analysts and engineers in different locations have no system for exchanging simulation data or standardizing their work processes. Such difficulties are especially evident in global enterprises, where design teams with extensive simulation capabilities often operate in relative isolation. Without effective procedures in place for managing simulation data and processes, collaboration, technology transfer, sharing of best practices, standardization of procedures, and comparison of results are severely hampered.

Enterprise Simulation Management

An evolving initiative being developed to address this industry situation and enable companies to more fully leverage the company-wide value of simulation and analysis is Enterprise Simulation Management (ESM). ESM isn’t provided by technology alone, but from the harmonization and integration of simulation and analysis activities and technologies across and integrated into the overall product development processes. The major objective of ESM is to transform simulation from a specialty operation to an enterprise product development enabler. ESM includes two primary components:

1. Capturing and replicating simulation-based process knowledge to be shared, reused, continuously improved, and utilized by a range of individuals across the enterprise.

2. Managing simulation information and processes, and integrating these with the rest of the enterprise’s product development activities.

The domain of ESM spans many segments of the product lifecycle from conceptual design in the early stages of the cycle to design engineering, analysis and validation, and a growing number of aspects of manufacturing engineering. Because of its broad scope in the product lifecycle and the potential to touch a wide range of disciplines, ESM can become a fundamental component of a company’s strategy for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) to tackle product and product-related process improvement across the enterprise.

Early Gains and Long-Term Value

An ESM approach provides companies with an opportunity for substantial initial and continuous improvement of business performance. Early gains derive from improved efficiencies and integrity of activities resulting from information management technologies and processes. Major longer-term gains come from the ability to capture unique company best practices and then enable continuous improvement through additional experience, enable consistent repeatability, and make these practices usable when appropriate by “less expert” individuals throughout the product lifecycle.

In an ESM-enabled environment, the capture of knowledge and best practices becomes pervasive and useful throughout the extended enterprise. Experts develop their practices and the environment provides a mechanism to capture both these practices and the results of the simulation analyses. Once these are captured, they are made available to be utilized by anyone in the organization capable of gaining value from them.

Capturing simulation and analysis best practices provides the basis for reusing those practices as part of “packaged simulation and analysis processes”
developed by skilled analysis experts so designers, manufacturing engineers, and other individuals can readily see the results and use that information to make better decisions. In this way, the knowledge of skilled analysis experts is captured, managed, and utilized as broadly across the enterprise as is appropriate to result in the most value.

The ability to more broadly utilize simulation capabilities and enable non-experts to benefit from expert defined best practices provides many positive returns, including:
•    Eliminating barriers between various groups
•    Enabling improved assessment of risks
•    Enabling more informed decisions
•    Enabling more collaboration

In this way, ESM provides the opportunity to transform simulation and analysis into a key business advantage. As the role of simulation continues to expand throughout the product lifecycle, companies that take the lead in utilizing ESM will have a competitive edge.