It strikes me, that without us really recognizing it, simulation has become more relevant for product development than physical testing.

(Please note, I said product development, not product validation.)

As innovation in product design and manufacturing methods increase, it has become much more difficult to procure representative and statistically relevant tests of proposed designs in sufficient time. Increasingly, new designs are based on experience (past designs) and simulation. Physical testing is much less of a factor.

Why? Well, given compressed development schedules, it is hard to obtain representative parts (built on production tooling) in sufficient time to then test them and make engineering decisions. Also, it is prohibitively expensive to do statistically valid physical testing.

So, for that reason, companies need to look at how they manage their simulation strategy, what we call Simulation Governance. This is an issue for senior executive management, not just the high priests of simulation.

We at CIMdata will have more to say on this in the near future. You can see past publications here:

• https://www.nafems.org/publications/resource_center/bm_jan_15_1/
• https://www.cimdata.com/images/Downloads/SimGov_Blog.pdf

Let me know what you think!

Keith