Hi there,

Before you start simulating everything you can, stop, take a step back, and analyze your business for the right opportunity. Pick and choose your simulation battles. Don't get us wrong, we want engineering teams to be simulating more and more, but simulating every single thing is not only a waste of time, it can actually add risk to your business. This newsletter discusses how to develop the best simulation deployment strategy.

Assess Your Project

First, assess your project for the proper utilization of CAE. This involves a look at your business processes, the qualification test plan, the associating costs, and the corresponding business risks. In our latest blog, we explain exactly how we helped Medical Startup Cast21 assess their technical challenges for deploying engineering simulation into the product development of their new cast and brace alternative for orthopedic injuries.

Read about Cast21's simulation assessment on our blog here.

Assess your People

Next, assess the engineering team for their capabilities and core competencies. As we like to say here at Fastway, Engineering is a Knowledge Game. Managers need to have a deep understanding of their team's capabilities. It's paramount to understand where the team is good (like DFM for Plastic Injection Molding), where the team is great (like Tolerance Stack analysis and Statistical Process Control), and where your team could use some more experience (like Strength of Materials). If the team is a bit rusty on the details of the stress-strain curve for ductile materials, then GO GET TRAINING. Our classes are 25% theory and 75% application, so we help dust off the old college engineering cobwebs!

It's Q4 already (already!), so 2019 budgets are wrapping up and 2020 budgets are getting formalized. We're booking 2020 Q1 classes now, so get a formal quote today (we all know it takes a month to go through accounting anyways).

Asses your Programs

Finally, a careful review of your software programs and their licenses should be conducted. Look for areas where you are paying too much, or where the license packages have been restructured in your advantage. For example, look for ways to swap from a "node-locked" license which is fixed to a specific machine to a "floating" license which is hosted on a server and can be used by anybody on the intranet. Align the number of "advanced" licenses with the number of Experts you have, and look at the myriad cloud-base solutions out there for remote computing.

At Fastway, we do not sell software, so we can't help with licensing (however we can get free ones for your next class!). For those conversations, reach out to your local, friendly Value Added Reseller (VAR), or to the software company directly. We are friends with many VAR's, so if you aren't working with one now, we can refer you to a great one. In the mean time, you can search for Resellers for Autodesk HERE, Ansys HERE, PTC Creo HERE, Solidworks HERE. For the Web-based CAD/CAE you can contact Onshape directly HERE and Simscale HERE.