By John Clisham

Automating, integrating, and streamlining applications can lead to substantial productivity improvements and a greatly increased return on investment in existing software tools. At Procter & Gamble, a firm specializing in manufacturing consumer products, these gains have come from solutions as diverse as spreadsheets and legacy codes to databases and computer-aided engineering (CAE) applications.

Most people think of the automobile or aerospace industries when they read the term CAE. However, Procter & Gamble is on the leading edge of a trend among manufacturers applying a wide variety of high-end engineering analysis software to Excel spreadsheets as well as multiple aspects of their manufacturing process. Modeling and simulation plays a key role in many of P&G’s initiatives from package design to plant productivity.

CAE has been saving P&G tens of millions of dollars per fiscal year, and yet traditionally CAE has only been applied to 20 percent of company initiatives. It became obvious the company needed to broaden accessibility to the capability to realize potentially more savings. But there was a problem: the prohibitively steep learning curve for many of the tools used in CAE.

> > Multiple brands at Procter & Gamble use EASA software. By simplifying access to its HPC capabilities, the company has fine-tuned everything from package design to plant productivity.

A unique blend of engineering and IT skills was necessary to work on the P&G Grid, the company’s in-house HPC component of its Intranet. What’s more, it was frequently necessary to execute multiple steps using multiple complex software packages in order to complete a single analysis or case study once one was begun. Design engineers would develop concepts and pass these to analysts to develop models and simulations to evaluate them. Going back and forth between the design engineers and the analysts often took months.

Despite the value created by using these modeling and simulation techniques, the delays were impeding the innovation process. Considering the length of time it took to complete a single analysis, it is easy to see why CAE wasn’t applied to more initiatives.

A new goal was set: deliver sustainable and supportable systems architecture and associated work process changes to simplify and streamline access to automated modeling and simulation analysis. P&G wanted to have this functionality Web-enabled so the tools would be available to users without needing to install unfamiliar tools on their workstations or learn Unix to interact with P&G’s Grid. A project developed to deliver a common toolset and technology platform to simplify, deploy, and automate complex work processes via the P&G intranet.

To get there, P&G picked EASA Software and Services as a key component in this initiative. EASA enables P&G to rapidly create graphically rich, web-enabled applications that automate and simplify access to the company’s high-performance computing software and hardware. Because it provides a layer of abstraction to multiple computing software packages, from commercial engineering analysis codes to complex Excel spreadsheets and databases, it has cross-function and cross-business unit applicability. It facilitates simulation at multiple points along the way from the beginning to the end of commercial initiatives.

< < P&G employees use a browser to access EASA and use the custom applications that have been published.

EASA (enterprise accessible software applications) has excellent database connectivity capability, allowing for data-fed applications as well as integration with corporate repositories for storing and archiving results. EASA has cross-platform capability, meaning Linux, Unix, and Windows applications can be accessed seamlessly in a work process. In addition, EASA has a simple, secure, easy-to-maintain infrastructure, resulting in high availability and reliability.

EASA’s authoring tools enable our expert application users to easily design, build, and deploy custom tools that are accessible to users who have limited understanding of the underlying software, whether it is a math-based analysis tool or a complex spreadsheet. The authoring interface has a simple tree structure that allows authors to drag and drop predefined objects such as text input fields, sliders, or radio buttons needed on each input page. Creating and customizing these objects does not require any computer programming experience, so the experts themselves can quickly define the inputs, processes, and outputs desired in each model. The output can be tables, charts, images, or whatever the expert building the application deems appropriate.

The end user accesses each model through the corporate intranet. EASA’s Web interface has been customized to match the rest of P&G’s intranet site, providing a seamless user experience. Users see a list of EASA applications that can be categorized so they are easily found. When opening an application, users define the case or cases to be investigated with clean, simple input screens. With a click of a button, the underlying process is executed on P&G’s high-performance technical computing grid. Behind the scenes, the input is processed using one or more of a variety of tools such as Fluent and AcuSolve thermal and fluids analysis codes; Harpoon and ICEM CFD meshing codes; and Fieldview and Ensight postprocessing tools, as well as more common tools such as Excel and Access. The user simply waits and lets EASA control the flow of data, periodically checking the status of the run via the Web. When the simulation is complete, the results are again accessed via the Web. All the engineers’ runs are stored in a searchable format in order to preserve their histories, reducing the chances of solving the same problem more than once.

> > P&G’s Virtual Packaging Simulation (VPS), built with EASA, replaces a custom-built .Net application and is significantly more cost-effective to deploy and maintain.

One highly valued tool developed by P&G is the virtual packaging simulation (VPS). The VPS simulations mimic standard test methods for bottles and caps. VPS is a compilation of several underlying tools. These include structural simulation of containers subjected to various loads (which occur during stacking by retailers or squeezing by consumers). In addition, this tool enables simulations of packages on a conveyor and extrusion blow-molding processes.

All of these models are driven by a tool called VPS Job Manager. Originally a custom-built .Net client-based application, which required each user to have his or her own individual installation, using a centralized Web-based deployment of Job Manager from EASA solves the obvious problems. It makes change management of the application much simpler because all updates are made to a single, central program. This eliminates client installation and allows users to focus on their work instead of software upgrades. It also makes any changes available to everyone as soon as they are published. This provides central, worldwide access along with all other modeling applications without requiring a special software installation.

P&G was particularly interested in enhancing the value of Excel. By creating and publishing an EASA application that is connected to a central Excel spreadsheet, several benefits have been obtained. First, version control is assured: everyone is using the same version of the spreadsheet. Furthermore, any intellectual property contained in the underlying spreadsheet is protected. Finally, an improved user interface (provided without any programming) makes the use of even the most complex spreadsheets completely foolproof.

Another benefit of the EASA solution are database interfaces that are tailored to specific applications that are not necessarily related to engineering and manufacturing. There are potential opportunities to leverage EASA to allow fast and easy analysis of marketing information, such as understanding or predicting the impact of a targeted promotion.

Expanding the use of P&G’s existing software tools across more initiatives is expected to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in savings every fiscal year, and EASA is an enabling component. EASA helps bridge the gap between the experienced practitioners’ knowledge, the IT skills needed to expose and host these tools, and user ability to leverage these models. P&G believes the potential benefit will bear out as it begins to increase the number of models and processes it automates and deploys using the EASA software package.

“In 1906, the only way to fly was to be a pilot,” says Tom Lange, director of modeling and simulation at Procter & Gamble. “In 2006, all you need to know is where the airport is. For the last 50 years, modeling and simulation has required a ‘pilot’s license.’ Now, with the aid of tools like EASA, we have developed the first ‘modeling airport’ for pilots and passengers.”

John Clisham is the systems manager for the Global Business Services division of Procter & Gamble. Send your comments about this article through e-mail by clicking here. Please reference “CAE Plush, December 2006” in your message.

EASA Software and Services
Tampa, FL