Our identity at SIMULIA is “Simulation for Product, Nature, and Life.” This phrase is a very broad description of what our solutions can do—from:
- PRODUCTS such as simple o-rings to entire airplanes,
- to NATURE such as volcano magma chambers and oil reservoir geomechanics,
- to LIFE such as our Living Heart Project and Virtual Human initiative.
Simulation today is a growing part of the business processes in many industries involved with Product, Nature, and Life, and SIMULIA is continuing to grow rapidly as a result.
Our value proposition is “Simulation Powers Innovation!”
We know it is true from the many wonderful stories of users who have transformed their company’s products using simulation to improve performance and reliability of existing products and to even discover new design concepts that would not have been found without computation.
It is much more than just simulation-based design—it is simulation-powered innovation
Three things are required to practice simulation-powered innovation.
- You need TECHNOLOGY—and lots of it—because innovation is hard work.
- You need a PLATFORM—to collaborate, share, expose, and institutionalize the value of simulation throughout your entire enterprise. And most importantly,
- You need the INNOVATOR—a user who goes beyond the “solve” aspect of simulation and who appreciates the power of virtual insight to change the game.
“Innovator” is a scary word. It sounds like risk-taking, like being at the cutting-edge, like being a pioneer or inventor. Nothing could be further from the truth. Simulation-based innovation reduces risk, helps you identify and stay away from the cutting edge of failure, and leverages all of your learning to discover something new and possible—to discover something new and possible—then let’s you do it all over again. We have seen many examples already at our SIMULIA Community Conferences¹ of Innovators at work—engineers like Dan Price from adidas, Brett Staubach of Pratt & Whitney, Dominique Moreau of Airbus, and Martin Hilchenbach of Max Planck Institute.
This issue features the story of Bruce Dale at ExxonMobil, a company recognizing the value of simulation to help extract our precious natural hydrocarbon resources safely and efficiently. In addition to these role models, the tools you need to innovate are also already at your disposal. From the Power of the Portfolio suite to 3DEXPERIENCE simulation to the value offered by our partner’s products, simulation-based innovation led by the Innovator who sees the future is already a reality in many simulation groups today.
Being an Innovator is an appropriate topic for this fall’s Regional User Meetings that many of you are attending. At these meetings, you’ll be able to meet other Innovators who can help you understand the value of pushing the boundaries at your own company and who can help you realize you are not alone in the task. The simulation world is changing, and thus the world of the simulation user is also changing.
Remaining simply an analyst is becoming less and less of an option—transitioning your thinking from “solve” to “innovate” is the only real career path moving forward in our busy world.
