This presentation recording was made at NAFEMS Americas Seminar "Engineering Analysis & Simulation in the Automotive Industry: Creating the Next Generation Vehicle Accurate Modelling for Tomorrow's Technologies".

The automotive engineering community is now confronting the largest technology transformation since its inception. This includes the electrification of powertrains for more efficient consumption and cleaner emissions, the reinvention of the battery with fast wireless charging capabilities and finally the advent of a fully autonomous vehicle. Compounding to these technology changes, the automotive companies design verification process is moving away from a major reliance on physical testing to almost a full virtual simulation product verification process. The challenges to the automotive engineers are enormous and require a significant increase in the upfront use of numerical simulation capabilities, methods and processes such they’re able to efficiently design, manufacture and deliver these very innovative technologies to the market in greater speeds than ever before.)

Resource Abstract

To remain competitive in our modern fast-paced engineering environment companies are challenged, not only to leverage the latest technology to their processes and engineering tools in product and process development, but they are also being tasked to re-invent themselves as a business. Companies can no longer afford to develop products in a “vacuum” but must now interact across well defined “silos” of subject matter experts during product development, market introduction as well as in-service to retirement. In our modern connected world, to properly utilize virtual engineering, companies must be able to adopt methods and processes that enable technologies such as the Internet-of-Things (IoT), Digital Twin, etc. Systems Engineering thinking and the enablement and deployment of the latest best practices and solutions in this space are crucial for the successful development of complex systems that have become part of most products in today’s world.



Within companies, it has become apparent that tools alone will not save the day. Tools alone can no longer be the guiding factor for developing sound business processes. Companies need to re-think the way they work and organize themselves. They need to start thinking in terms and order of: Organization / Culture - Processes - Tools. This requires, especially for management, a more active engagement model while at the same time provide an environment for creativity and flexibility for their workers. Traditional methods to run a business are no longer sustainable for the long term. Some critical adjustments must be made to allow for innovation. One of the major challenges traditional engineering companies face in this context is, how to merge simulation & analysis with the world of systems engineering into system modeling and simulation (SMS) and how to realize the benefit from creating such system modeling and simulation driven engineering environment.



In this presentation we will discuss the technical challenges management is currently facing and how they can be addressed in this ever-increasing complex engineering environment.