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Automotive Industry

High-performance computing, Boeing &, design for Six Sigma

Automotive Design & Production, August, 2003

Although Silicon Graphics (SGI; Mountain View, CA) is probably most well known to the public because its computers have long been used by Hollywood for generating amazing special effects and Boeing (Chicago) is known to the public for, of course, its aircraft, SGI is a leader in technical high-performance computing, and Boeing has been selling highly technical software (e.g., such as that used as the kernels of most commercially available finite element analysis packages) for quite some time.

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One of the things that SGI has been promoting of late is something called multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO). Rather than relying on individual, discrete analyses of aspects of a product being developed, a step-by-step approach, MDO involves running multiple simulations and analyses such that outputs from one assessment can be used for another. Now they are ratcheting things up with their collaboration with Boeing's Phantom Works. According to Dr. Dan'l Pierce, senior manager, Mathematics 6 Engineering Analysis, with the Phantom Works, he and his colleagues have developed both software and a methodology for Design for Six Sigma (DFSS). So the SGI-Boeing collaboration is one that's offering DFSS/MDO consulting services and product.

"Most companies understand the importance of reaching Six Sigma quality," said Larry McArthur, SGI's senior director of Manufacturing Industry Marketing." They all start with fixing the process and hit the wall at 4 to 4.5 sigma, which still presents them with 30,000 defects per million opportunities. Our solution will help them optimize their product design, treating quality as an independent variable and achieving Six Sigma quality, which produces only four defects per million opportunities. The return on investment is obvious and significant."

And it is because of this ROI that McArthur thinks the AADO/DFSS program will be of interest to executives in organizations. While multidisciplinary design optimization may be of something best understood by people with "Ph.D" on their business cards, the significant savings that Six Sigma can provide (to say nothing of the fact that former GE head Jack Welch was a proponent of it) is something that the accounting minded can bank on.--GSV

Automotive Industry

High-performance computing, Boeing &, design for Six Sigma

Automotive Design & Production, August, 2003

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