SME (a non-profit student and professional association for educating and advancing the manufacturing industry in North America) recently invited me to conduct a half-day workshop at its AeroDef Manufacturing conference/exposition March 26-29 at the Long Beach Convention Center, Long Beach, California. The workshop will focus on AweSim’s modeling and simulation (M&S), high performance computing (HPC) initiatives for small- and mid-sized manufacturers.
AeroDef Manufacturing® is the leading exposition and technical conference for the aerospace and defense manufacturing industry. Its mission is to foster innovation to reduce costs, expedite production times, and maintain manufacturing competitiveness in the global economy. AeroDef showcases the industry’s most advanced technologies and its keynote speakers and panelists come from the highest level of government and business, sharing their visions of the potential of technology, collaboration, and public policy to transform manufacturing.
AeroDef is the one event that brings together high-concept, integrated solutions and real-world applications, and this year AWESIM will be sharing the stage. Last year, 1,700 industry professionals from around the globe attended the AeroDef Manufacturing conference. SME anticipates close to 2,000 attendees for AreoDef 2018.
The AweSim workshop will build understanding of M&S/HPC and how simulation-driven design with M&S/HPC replaces physical product prototyping with less-expensive computer simulations, which reduces the time to take products to market, improves quality, and cuts costs. The AweSim workshop lays the foundation that will help you build the business case for applying it at your company.
The six stops my workshop will feature include:
The Modeling Foundation: Taking a look at how modeling leadership can catalyze and drive cultural change.
There is more than one way to get started:
- What is needed? A CRISIS can inspire and open an organization’s mind to take on new ways of working.
- What is possible? Targeting a specific job to be done that is currently unaffordable or simply can’t be done without innovation is the perfect way to introduce M&S HPC.
Formulation of your plan: Dream and plan big but start small and simple. To do that:
- Build complexity and breadth as it is needed over time.
- Pay as you go.
- Prioritize models with potential for broad adoption and reuse.
- Feed “must-succeed” projects.
Action Planning/Work Process:
- Embed modeling objectives, goals, strategies, and measures in your plans.
- Plan for decision-making on day one. Clarify who makes decisions, what type of decision need to be made, and what is “good enough” validation.
- Expect and coach projects and individuals to execute modeling, and incorporate broad modeling experience in reviews.
- Fund virtual by shifting budget away from traditional approaches. Determine what you will stop, start, and continue doing.
Resourcing and Organization: Collaboration and technical mastery are vital:
- Strategically invest in and staff the TRIAD and Technical Mastery. Recruit, develop, and reward masters.
- Drive excellent problem definition.
- Create and plan for capacity and capability.
- Create and nurture a co-located critical mass, especially while skills and momentum are being established.
- Outsourcing for capacity and expertise is an important part of planning. Leveraging the modeling community’s experience (success and failures) is key. Make sure you do not outsource your insight.
Modeling Journey: Successful modeling includes all-in leadership and sponsorship.
- Develop a vision and set breakthrough goals.
- Be patient with growth; this includes expecting the initial approach to be wrong.
- Be impatient for profit, start small, pay as you go and drive early successes.
- Manage the full range of personal, social, and structural influencers for harnessing motivation and building ability.
The AweSim workshop will not teach you the nuts and bolt of M&S, but is designed to help you understand that you do not have to become a modeling expert. Instead, you need to understand it and leverage it. M&S/HPC is a new tool in the technology toolbox, and to be effective it’s important to create a compelling business case and eliminate cultural road blocks in a company. The AweSim workshop will give attendees the tools to build a business case for adopting M&S/HPC and pointers on how to drive cultural changed in their company.
