The role of simulation with no mesh, no mess and no fuss.
Siemens has sponsored this post.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A company’s sole CAD engineer walks into the office of its only CAE expert. They say, “Do I have a design for you. It’s sure to pass every simulation you can throw at it. It’s foolproof.” The expert looks at the large geometry and says, “Yeah! It’s got a lot of details. I’ll get back to you in four weeks.” The engineer says, “Four weeks!? It’s due tomorrow. I was assigned the part yesterday. I know it’s a good design!” The expert says, “I know. It’s a big mesh.”
Early product development is rife with challenges that can slow small to medium businesses (SMB) to a crawl. Traditional CAD/CAE workflows require too many resources to tackle an ever-shifting, complex design. It goes beyond the dollars and cents of a tight budget. SMBs lack the time, people, technology, workflows, ecosystems, hardware, software and training to implement most simulation-led design strategies.
Bigger companies have access to large, cloud-based ecosystems designed to maximize the workflow efficiencies between designers, simulation experts, the manufacturing floor, regulatory compliance and the rest of the product lifecycle. But SMBs are forced to make do with half a dozen people, disparate software licenses, outdated hardware and manually controlled file management.
Here’s the good news: SMBs have an ace up their sleeve in the form of simulation-in CAD. With these tools, designers can produce a near perfect, tested and simulated design — often with no mess, no mesh and no fuss. So, by the time the design reaches a simulation expert it’s likely to require minimal iterations. But this isn’t the only benefits simulation-led design brings SMBs. Here are three persistent product development challenges small organizations often face that can be easily addressed using simulation-in CAD.
1. People challenges when SMBs design products
In SMBs, people wear a lot of hats. Your CFO might also be your controller, HR, head of sales, resource manager or procurement expert — or all the above. And though this person is critical to the success of a product launch, let alone development, they may not have the technical background to understand a CAD file — or how to open it.
Upper management are not the only ones plagued by the people and staffing challenges of an SMB. Many people will be expected to rise above their training, or lack thereof, to pick up the slack. Engineers, designers and CAD experts are no exception. There is no time to make a design, toss it over to the simulation expert, wait a month and then iterate on something you haven’t thought about in weeks. SMBs are supposed to be fast and nimble.
This is the beauty of simulation-in CAD. It enables designers to utilize basic simulation features to quickly answer questions about their geometry. Since the simulation tools are integrated into the software and user interface engineers use every day, and accessible with a CAD license, using them requires minimal training or headache. They don’t even have to open another tool or window to run the simulation — they just make it. Thus, the only thing holding them back from iterating a design is their own imagination and a decent understanding of physics — two things an engineer has in spades.
Nonetheless, the models these design engineers make using simulation-in CAD tools are unlikely to be at the caliber that the company’s CAE expert could produce. Afterall, they may not have the proper training, software or hardware tools. But these simulations should be good enough to act as divining rods to help iterate the model. This way, by the time the geometry ends up on the simulation expert’s desk they are already looking at a nearly optimized design.
According to Siemens Digital Industries Software, the ability to explore the design space early by implementing simulation-led design workflows can reduce development time by less than half. This frees up the expert’s time so they can focus on bigger, more complex simulations. Meanwhile, the engineer only needs to prep one, maybe two, PowerPoint reports for the CFO instead of half a dozen or more.
2. Technology challenges when SMBs design products
Of course, the previous example assumes that the SMB has the software and hardware tools to produce complex simulations in the first place. High-performance computing (HPC) represents a significant capex and can quickly become out-of-date. Meanwhile, cloud computing costs can easily add up to overshoot operational budgets.
Thus, for some SMBs the only tools they may have at their disposal to implement a simulation-led design workflow are a few decent workstations and a CAD license or two. Keep in mind, those CAD licenses may not be for the same software, which means users are slowed down by file management and compatibility issues. According to users that have integrated design and simulation workflows, they have reduced analysis times by up to 80 percent as the new workflow reduces file sharing, chances of human error and identifies issues early.
Thus, simulation-in CAD addresses these technological challenges as well. The simulations they run tend to be simplified, so they run quickly on nothing more than a workstation with a CPU and GPU. Again, these simulations won’t be as detailed as if they were made with higher-end technology. But as previously mentioned, they don’t have to be. They only need to be good enough to point the designer in the right direction — towards a near optimal design.
As a bonus, since that design will now need fewer iterations, less data needs to be swapped between disparate software systems — further speeding up development.
3. Process challenges when SMBs design products
One of many important lessons from Eliyahu Goldratt’s “The Goal” — a must read for any SMB decision maker — is that cross departmental collaboration within a company is key to solving product lifecycle challenges. So, when processes make it challenging to collaborate it can prove devastating, especially when facing short product development deadlines.
Inefficient workflows can slow development considerably by introducing delays, rework, miscommunications and errors. If these issues persist, they can make regulatory compliance impossible or lead to expensive recalls and manufacturing delays. These issues are only exacerbated when outside engineering services, providers, contactors, consultants and suppliers are brought into the mix.
Goldratt’s characters don’t always agree — especially at the start of the novel. But as they start to listen to each other they begin to realize how a hiccup during an early stage in a product’s lifecycle can spiral into significant delays in subsequent stages. The story sees people in roles that were once siloed (including a plant manager, controller/accountant, inventory manager, production manager, data processing manager, union reps, sales, marketing and even secretaries) working together, communicating and discovering and addressing system bottlenecks. In the end, the system’s throughput is increased, and the team can get products to market faster.
Even with a small SMB team siloes can begin to pop up. The disparate software, hardware and training will play a role here. It’s easy to get into the habit of doing your task, tossing the data to the next cubicle and calling it a day. This is the primary benefit of the large, cloud-based ecosystem large companies have access to. They work off a single source of truth that is updated in real-time and which everyone has access to, and can work together on, the same information. These ecosystems put collaboration front and center.
However, simulation-in CAD can play a role in smoothing out these process challenges by taking a page out of Goldratt’s novel. Since the simulations these tools run are fast, they are perfectly suited to run in front of a whole team within a physical, or digital, boardroom. Just as the key players in the novel meet constantly to plan everyone’s next move, members of an SMB can do the same while huddled around a CAD or CAE expert running simulations. People don’t even need to be in the same room or time zone, as the software can be screen-shared in a virtual call. If a production manager says a part is too big to fit in a machine, the CAD engineer can shorten it in real time, run all the standard simulations and have answers for all attendees at the meeting in minutes. They can then all discuss the findings, come up with new answers and move onto the next iteration.
This setup also contributes to meeting, and exceeding, both regulatory compliance and short development deadlines. Meetings can be recorded (via minutes, audio recordings, or even AI notetakers) in documents that include real-time simulation data and the logic behind every decision. This will ensure that it’s easy to prove compliance.
Additionally, errors that only a specialist would notice (for example, a procurement specialist noting that a part suffers from supply chain risks) can be found and addressed quickly. This will help to ensure a quick, but accurate, sprint to market.
Where do SMBs go from here for simulation-led design?
Chances are if an SMB is already running a CAD license, then the simulation-in CAD options they will first consider will involve what they already have. Various CAD providers offer their own simulation-in CAD options, but they are not equivalent. Some will make it possible to run different types of simulations. Others will boast they are future proof. Namely, that as the company transitions from an SMB running “what-they-got” to a big business implementing a cloud-based, design ecosystems, that the simulation-in CAD technology and workflows are compatible with said ecosystem.
One of the newer contenders in this space, Siemens NX Performance Predictor, aims to be the best of both worlds in this respect. It offers CAD users access to various known and proven Siemens simulation technologies. The tools and workflows are also compatible with Siemens’ ecosystem offerings. As a result, NX Performance Predictor will be a good simulation-in CAD candidate for many SMBs.
To learn more about it, read “What’s New in NX | June 2023 | Performance Predictor.”
