Innovate profitably

In fact, companies who want to achieve something more than just to stay afloat should not abandon any of these two initiatives. The challenge lies in finding practical ways of achieving both goals at the same time.

The most visionary companies are taking advantage of moments of difficulty to put itself at the head in their sectors through innovation. They are both need new solutions to achieve or maintain the leadership to address the main challenges faced by companies in their manufacturing processes, both today and in the next few years.

For example, the integrity and quality of the product are key in the most competitive industries, because bugs are extremely costly. A product that must be repaired or replaced constantly impacts directly on the benefits and harms the reputation of the company. Concern for the safety is also a constant and minimize, or get cured, the risks arising from the use of products throughout their life cycle. Another growing concern is also the eco-design, sustainability and respect for the environment are driving innovation to a new stage in developing any product.

Companies are immersed in a race for innovation. Develop products that generate a high demand and high-quality, and do so successfully, has a lot to do with innovation. Get it means breaking the form and the traditional techniques of the past and redesign the processes of development of the product so that you can reduce costs, shorten time to market it and minimize the financial risks. The "business as usual" is no longer an option.

To be at the forefront of innovation already does not serve to create multiple physical prototypes, to test each design and behaviour. This requires budgets high, in addition to involve lengthy development processes to put products on the market. On the contrary, the new processes should enable companies design with quality and develop innovative products at lower prices.

The last report of the consulting firm Aberdeen, ' strategies for cost savings: the use of simulation to better decision making ' sheds light on what are best practices for successful companies, to comply with the objectives of shortening timesave costs and offer the highest quality.

Aberdeen says that leading-edge companies in each sector systematically used engineering simulation for the design of new products in virtual environments. They get so forward and be faster than its competitors, optimizing processes for development and manufacturing, to implement strategies that allow them to hit from the first moment. For example, can predict and

analyze the behavior of the product throughout its life cycle, from the most initial stages of the design process. In addition, they assess more iterations, from the moment of the concept or design. Using the simulation of engineering can reduce the experiments and tests with physical prototypes. To do so in the virtual world, they shorten the time of placing the product on the market, which impact positively on the company. They also open the door to try and extremely significant improvements, thanks to the use of innovative solutions to do so.

There are already many companies using simulation in their design processes, but which will be more successful are those that do so systematically, to apply it throughout the process, using the concept of virtual simulation as standardby integrating this strategy in the "heart" of the company and allowing interactions between designers, engineers and analysts, through an integrated and common software for the use of all of them. In this way can gain a competitive advantage, providing effective and accurately the performance of the products, what most often involves analyzing iterations non-linear physical, structural analysis of dynamics of fluids, electromagnetic modelsanalysis of fatigue and a number of other research. In addition, the interactions between individual parts of a product and the product and its environment require complex geometrical patterns and features for measurement, as well as advanced high performance computing.

Although the concept of development of products through simulation may be an ideal target in the design of processes for companies, cannot be put into practice successfully if it is not with the most advanced technological platformwhich include the comprehensive understanding of the processes of design and allows to simulate the entire process, from beginning to end, with complex multi-físicos analysis.

There can be no doubt of the benefits that brings engineering simulation and companies who do not grasp this train, will soon experience the disadvantages: may not maintain their competitiveness. The leaders of tomorrow will systematically develop virtual models detailed, leveraging these tools of simulation to optimize cost savings and to develop new innovative designs to obtain significant competitive gains in the coming years.