Create a Computing Workflow to Support Simulation-led Design

You are surrounded by computing power and functionality, so much so that it can be daunting to determine what type of resources to apply to different design engineering tasks. Are tablets, with their modest computing capabilities, useful for anyone on your design engineering team? How should workstations be equipped to best support conceptual designers vs. detailed computer-aided design (CAD) software users vs. simulation analysts vs. rendering and animation experts? Should you set up a cluster of computing resources? Should you burst to the cloud? What about virtual machines? The list of computing questions goes on and on. There are answers to be found, and they’re worth uncovering.

Using the right tool for the job not only avoids frustration, it removes precious time from the design cycle, ultimately resulting in faster product development. While every design engineering team may have different computing requirements, they all share the same need you do: to develop better products faster in an increasingly complex product development environment. According to Roland Berger strategy consultants, product complexity doubled between 1997 and 2012 across all industries, even as the average product lifecycle shortened by 24%.

Increasingly, engineering departments are meeting the challenge to produce better products in less time via simulation-led design workflows. For example, GM’s PLM Leader Craig Brown said simulation and virtual testing has allowed the auto industry reduce its time to market despite the amazing complexities that have been introduced to automotive design — from lightweight materials to more efficient engines to tens of millions of lines of code. As the name implies, simulation-led design brings simulation further forward in the design cycle to both reduce an organization’s reliance on expensive and time-consuming physical testing, and to quickly try many different design approaches to find the optimal ones to pursue.

A simulation-led design strategy requires the right computing environment to support it. As pressure mounts to be faster than the competition, it might be tempting to clamor for an immediate computing hardware investment. Those who hold the purse strings in your organization may even agree. But before long, your engineering workflow may include a patchwork of expensive computing solutions that is a nightmare to maintain, is underutilized and/or won’t scale to support future engineering challenges. On the other end of the spectrum, those who hold the purse strings may not understand why the engineering team’s computing needs should stray so far afield from the needs of other departments.

The solution is a balanced approach that looks at the big picture, puts the engineering department’s importance to the company in context, and wisely invests in the computing needed to support an efficient engineering computing workflow. Such a workflow — when approached systematically rather than in fits and starts, or as a template that sacrifices engineering computing on the altar of enterprise conformity — multiplies your organization’s return on investment (ROI).

A systematic approach requires you to:

1. Take an inventory of needs.

2. Match those needs to the best computing resources.

3. Deploy those resources with proper user training.

Step 1: Get What You Need

The process of taking an inventory of needs will vary from organization to organization. A small engineering team may get everyone in the same room to get the group’s needs out in the open. A large, engineering-centered enterprise may opt to create a planning team or hire a consultant to observe, survey and interview its engineers to reveal the same information. No matter what form the process takes, it’s important to differentiate between wants and needs.

“Needs are simply the differences between your current achievements and your desired accomplishments,” according to A Guide to Assessing Needs, a free resource available via the World Bank’s open knowledge initiative that deeply delves into the process of needs assessment. “Needs do not, however, include any mention or discussion of computers, budgets, training courses … executive coaching, leadership, incentives, policy analysis, microfinance strategies, holiday bonuses, reengineering, or any other techniques used to achieve results. Rather, your needs are the basic gaps between current and desired performance.”

So this is not the time to say: “I need a new workstation.” This is, however, the time to say: “If we’re going to meet our deadlines, I need to complete simulation runs faster than the six hours they are averaging.”

A thorough needs assessment will likely uncover a number of gaps in your workflow between where you are and where you should be. Some of those gaps can be closed with new hires, training or process improvements, and others can be closed with the right technology.

Step 2: Consider Computing Resources

For those need gaps that can be closed with computing technology, it’s important to consider more than just hardware. Hardware is only made useful by software, so the software you’re using now, the software you should be using now, and the software you plan to use should help your hardware investments.

A brief outline of the pros and cons associated with different hardware for different stages of the design process can be found in the table below. For a detailed discussion of each solution, please download the first chapter of The Design Engineer’s High-Performance Computing Handbook at hpc.deskeng.com/download.

Step 3: Deploy

You’ve analyzed your needs, determined the right hardware for your software and decided on the best configuration for you computing resources. You’re done, right? Wrong. Your needs analysis should have determined why a particular computing resource is needed, but that doesn’t mean your team will automatically understand how to use those resources effectively, or how to navigate software vendors’ licensing requirements, which can quickly become complex.

Even putting something as simple an inexpensive computer tablet in the hands of the engineers on your team is a waste of money and time without proper training. Likewise, an engineer given an upgraded workstation may not fully realize — and therefore not fully utilize — its capabilities. Many engineering teams drop the ball when it comes to training and support.

Finish strong in the deployment stage to make the most out of your local and remote computing resources.

Download the full first chapter of the Design Engineer's High-Performance Computing Handbook here.