This was presented at the NAFEMS World Congress 2025, held in Salzburg, Austria from May 19–22, 2025.

Abstract

Engineering Simulation is more critical than ever for any organisation engineering and delivering products in today'™s highly competitive, complex, and technologically innovative world. Business Leaders need to be able to trust their simulation results to enable them to make product decisions and business commitments with confidence. And yet, simulation for today'™s products is highly complex, and the accuracy and reliability of the results generated depends on many factors. Given it is so critical, it is really important that organisations have confidence in their simulation. To do this they need to pay attention to the essential elements that make up every simulation capability: ? Efficient processes that define the simulation workflows and aligned to the overall development processes. ? Capable and effective methods that define how to model the specific physics required to deliver the product requirements. ? Capable and connected tools to model the correct physics accurately. ? Representative and accurate models that reflect the latest design intent ? Reliable and accessible technical data to define material properties, technical specifications, modelling parameters, and use cases. ? Skilled and experienced people with product knowledge and experience of the tools and methods, organised effectively to maximise collaboration and efficiency. ? Sufficient, reliable and flexible computing infrastructure and resources to execute the complex and large scale simulations. These are the essential elements of a simulation capability, but before identifying actions there is some preparatory work to do. Organisations need to start by reviewing their product and business goals and identifying their expectations for simulation. They need to identify the direct and indirect stakeholders involved in simulation. And they need to identify the customer, product, manufacturing, and business requirements that the simulation team need to deliver, the to-do list! Having these foundations in place I believe these are the 7 most important practical actions that every organisation should take: 1. People - Identify your simulation stars and build a collaborative simulation community. 2. Processes - Review your simulation processes to check they define workflows efficiently, and align well to your product delivery process. 3. Methods '“ Assess how well your methods cover your requirements, and ensure you know the confidence the team has in their Methods? 4. Tools - Check your tool landscape, especially; gaps, duplicates, tool utilisation, tool chain connectivity and licence models. 5. Models '“ Create a Modelling Plan. Identify which models are needed for what, when, and with what fidelity for a given project. 6. Data - Check your input data needs, sources, availability and maturity. 7. Computing - Check your job submission process. Is capacity & performance a constraint? These 7 actions will give a good insight into the health of your simulation capability, and highlight the strengths and weaknesses in the organisation, enable improvement actions to be prioritised, and provide a great starting point to build a simulation strategy. In this presentation I will explain these 7 key actions, and outline how they provide a an important foundation to take the next steps to building a simulation strategy to achieve business goals.