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Automotive Design & Production, July, 2003 by Gary S. Vasilash

Given business drivers including:

* Shorter product development cycles

* Lower development costs

* Higher quality requirements

* Increased product complexity

* More Frequent product introductions

* More models and variants

* Critical release windows

what are product development organizations to do? Bruce L. Jenkins, executive vice president of Daratech Cambridge, MA), a market research and technology assessment Firm, rhetorically asked at its Intelligent Digital Prototyping Strategies For Automotive and OFF-Highway Strategies Workshop held last month in Novi, Michigan. Not surprisingly, given the venue, he suggested that simulation of systems, subsystems, and components could have profound benefits, especially in light of the Fact that many engineering organizations have undergone headcount reduction.

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Jenkins explained that there are new technical capabilities available--multidisciplinary optimization, design For Six Sigma, PIDO (Process Integration & Design Optimization)--that can be used to address the prevailing issues. But what about the headcount reduction? Jenkins suggested that [1) there is greater Functionality within systems that can allow, say, a designer to also perform the tasks of a design engineer and a CAE analyst. He said that with Fewer people, managers should push Forward the reengineering of processes so that people operate in more multidisciplinary modes than has been the case. By using technology to make an individual more multitasking and by using outsourcing partners, product development can be accelerated, despite the demands and the limitations.

Automotive Industry

Doing more with tech

Automotive Design & Production, July, 2003 by Gary S. Vasilash

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