Aligning Commercial, Government and Research Engineering Simulation Efforts

The focus of this ASSESS Initiative theme is to highlight and provide options to address the issue that the efforts related to advancing Engineering Simulation have three key but disjointed vectors (commercial, government, research). Although there have been significant advancements within each area, there has been little sharing of the new technologies across the different areas. There is a need to align the efforts in future development and implementation of simulation and systems engineering.

The Engineering Simulation efforts along these three vectors are very poorly aligned with a significant amount of “repeatedly reinventing the wheel.” The European Union has been working proactively in the last decade to address and resolve this issue while these efforts proceed in a manner that is close to oblivious to each other in North America.

• The research activities (universities and government) have no incentive to carry their research to deployment beyond the initial project funding.
• The commercial Engineering Simulation vendors struggle to justify funding fundamental research that does not have a clear path to deployment.
• Government agencies using Engineering Simulation are focused on their specific needs and often duplicate capabilities that are commercially available at a much lower cost than building new tools.
• The required expertise and expected capabilities for new users is exploding while the engineering curriculum at universities are changing slowly.
• IP transfer and rights have become a major roadblock for collaboration across the three vectors.

The goals of this ASSESS Initiative theme are:

1. Understand and define the issues related to aligning effort.
2. Explore and outline potential solution strategies for better alignment.
3. Develop potential mechanisms and resources for improving alignment.
4. Enable focused research activities targeted at addressing the key themes and challenges around ASSESS.

The ASSESS Initiative will explore the different issues and approaches associated with aligning commercial, government, and research Engineering Simulation efforts to provide understanding and guidance moving forward.