In a recent survey, 78% of those who participated identified “automation” as having made the single most important and meaningful contribution to mankind in the past one hundred years. Actually, that statement was completely made up. But if there were such a study, that number would likely be higher – much higher.
Few advancements, if any, have had such a widespread and profound effect as automation. Automated bill paying as well as direct depositing are capabilities that have relieved us of the time-consuming tasks of writing and sending checks and traveling to the bank to cash and deposit paychecks. On a larger scale, manufacturing automation has increased speed and decreased errors in the production of products in all industries. Digital automation has impacted life in a way that frees us to do more of the important things in our personal and business lives. But, while prevalent throughout nearly all aspects of today’s world, automation is surprisingly absent in product development processes where simulation is involved.
Chasing Improvement
In today’s cost-conscious and highly competitive environment, everyone from global enterprises to small businesses, and even individuals are searching for ways to become more efficient while streamlining activities and processes. Multi-tasking has become a way of life whether it’s dealing with our everyday activities or taking on expanding roles and demands in the workplace.
In most cases, however, there are little or no additional resources we can call on to compensate for the added tasks we undertake to improve our lives or make our businesses more successful. This is especially true for manufacturing companies where product performance, reliability, and quality are critical success factors. The cost of falling short on any of these attributes can be devasting to a company in terms of cost, future contracts, market share, and brand integrity.
Consequently, digital simulation is more critical today than ever and why it continues to present a significant challenge and opportunity for manufacturers and product development organizations.
CAE Reporting
A recent study from CIMdata, the leader in PLM education, research, and strategic management consulting, indicated that CAE analysts spend a significant amount of time performing repeatable tasks. The study concluded that this group and their organization could benefit significantly from available automation.
The engineering analysis and simulation process involves a number of key steps and relies on a highly trained staff of specialized CAE analysts. While some of these steps have been automated, others have not.
Requiring highly skilled CAE workforce members to perform tedious, repetitive tasks, such as building decks of PowerPoint slides for CAE reports, fails to leverage their expertise and limits their availability relative to much higher contributions – such as expanding the number of simulations use cases, diagnosing a product failure, evaluating the use of new materials, or introducing products into new markets.
It’s one thing if there were no alternative. But technology from VCollab elevates CAE reporting to a largely automated and highly intuitive process. With this additional automation in place, the capacity of the CAE analyst to provide greater strategic impact can be increased by as much as 35%.
Leveraging Digital Technology
Technology continues to have a measurable and growing impact on new product development. By eliminating redundancy, streamlining processes, enhancing innovation, and accelerating time-to-market, digital automation is delivering new levels of productivity, cost-savings, and profitability. But such benefits are best realized when these tools are fully leveraged to remove manual product development obstacles and bottlenecks.
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