ASSESS Initiative

The ASSESS Initiative was formed by intrinSIM and Cyon Research to bring together key players for guiding and influencing the software tool strategies for performing model-based analysis, simulation, and systems engineering, with the primary objective of expanding the use and business benefit of these tools.

The demand for software tools for Engineering Simulation are exploding to support the demand for increased competitiveness and to deal with the rapidly growing complexity of products, processes, and systems. At the same time, we are struggling to keep up with our current demand for experts who are able to use these tools effectively. Since these sophisticated tools are extremely complex and limited to use by highly specialized experts, the actual growth in usage and benefit of these technologies is directly related to the available expertise. This has resulted in an inability to meet the rapidly growing demand for a higher reliance on more realistic virtual engineering simulations.

What’s driving the explosion in demand in product, process, and systems engineering?

• Competitiveness: For 30 years, up through about 2008, the market for software tools for analysis, simulation and systems engineering experienced compound double-digit growth. Around 2008, market growth rate for simulation software dropped to single-digits, in part due to the global economic meltdown. The economic event forced firms to focus on competitiveness as a strategic business goal. This has driven increased visibility in the boardroom for systems engineering, simulation and analysis tools as key enablers to increased competitiveness.
• Complexity: The increasing role of software as a competitive advantage in traditionally hardware-only products is rapidly expanding the need for “co-evolution” in the design of hardware, software, electronics, and content. This has driven an increased awareness at the boardroom level of the value of moving analysis and simulation to the conceptual stage of the design process.
• Advances in technologies and materials: New technologies, including the rapidly advancing area of additive and hybrid manufacturing, and the explosion of materials with unprecedented properties are also driving the need for more advanced analysis and simulation.
• Better design decisions earlier:The move to use engineering simulations early in the product design and concept stage, in turn, is driving the demand for software tools that can be used by those who aren’t experts in analysis, simulation, or systems engineering.

The primary motivations for ASSESS are the business drivers that are forcing a “simulation revolution” to overcome the expertise based user requirements which have restricted the expansion of Engineering Simulation applications.

1. Companies worldwide are considering how to be more competitive in a challenging business climate.
   • Increased innovation
   • Reduced Risk & warranty Cost
   • Reduced time to market
   • d. Improved understanding of product performance is seen as key; this has demanded a significant increase in the use of analysis & simulation
2. The exponentially growing complexity of our manufacturing processes is creating an explosive need for increased use of Model-Based System Engineering. This more tightly integrated product modeling approach is being used by government and defense programs, and by thought-leading companies with rapidly growing interest across multiple industries, including integration with classical physics-based simulations for multi-fidelity simulations throughout the system design process.
3. The available computing power, cloud infrastructures, and emerging computing architectures are rapidly removing the computing bottlenecks associated with analysis & simulation. These advanced techniques are now enabling the use of simulation much earlier in the product design process, both from technical and financial standpoints.
4. The new world of 3D printed objects has opened up a tremendous opportunity for highly innovative designs and entirely new design procedures. This new technology brings a need to model and simulate the manufacturing processes for a better understanding of the resulting material properties and behavior characteristics, and a need for new approaches for assessing optimal design shape options prior to a standard CAD based product development process.
5. Entirely new applications of analysis and simulation, such as patient-specific biomedical devices and treatment planning, are creating a rapidly growing demand for software tools to enable breakthroughs in application areas that have not previously used analysis, simulation or systems modeling broadly.
6. Analysis, simulation and systems engineering software tools are currently used almost exclusively by a limited number of expert analysts.
   1. The limited availability of systems and simulation experts with the appropriate level of expertise is governing the possible rate of increased use of these key technologies.
   2. The advent of retirement of the experts, most of whom are baby boomers who are approaching retirement age.
   3. Inadequate resources to meet the growing demand unless the level of expertise is changed both significantly and rapidly.
7. The efforts related to advancing Engineering Simulation have three key but disjointed vectors. Although there have been significant advancements within each area, there has been little sharing of the new technologies across the different areas. There is a need to align the efforts in future development and implementation of simulation and systems engineering, including:
   1. Commercial software development and usage,
   2. Education and research, and
   3. Government and defense

The Analysis, Simulation and Systems Engineering Software Summit was the initial watershed event bringing together influential representatives from major engineering corporations, leading industry analysts, software and hardware vendors, and distinguished members of the academic and financial communities. The 40 ambassadors to the summit were among the leading thinkers of our industry, and people of substantial influence with the power to effect change. The summit was underwritten by the non-profit Center for Understanding Change c4uc.org and hosted by the Santa Fe Institute on January 8-9, 2015. The ambassadors put 104 issues up for discussion and ended up with 24 key challenges. After much discussion the following eight issues stood out:

1. Design-Centered Workflow
2. Ease of Use & Usability
3. Pre-CAD Analysis & Optimization
4. Impact of Web/Cloud/Mobile
5. Knowledge Capture & Reuse
6. Ability to Combine Heterogeneous Models in a Systems Approach
7. Appropriate Model Fidelity & Role of Unsexy Stuff
8. Licensing Models Need to be Revisited

The 1st Annual ASSESS Congress was held in January 2016 in Potomac, MD. This congress started where the Summit left off, bringing together the key participants to further review the current status, issues, goals and actionable items of the ASSESS Initiative, but with a deeper and broader pool of the leadership from the community of domain experts, industry analysts, software providers, researchers, and others in the community of Engineering Simulation. The role of the ASSESS 2016 congress was to guide and influence software development and strategies to the capture of value of, and to enable, expanding the use and practical scope of software for Engineering Simulation. Those who participated in ASSESS 2016 will help shape the industry and product strategies for the next decade.

85 participants consisting of a Who's-Who of the simulation software community participated in ASSESS 2016 Congress held in Potomac, MD. The participants explored seven (7) key themes for the ASSESS Initiative to establish: current state, Mission/Objectives, obstacles, and next steps.

1. Democratization of Engineering Simulation (DoES)
2. Simulation Confidence / Governance
3. Business Challenges
4. The Intersection of Systems Modeling and Classical Simulation
5. Aligning Commercial, Government & Research Interests and Efforts
6. Potential Game Changers
7. Looking Forward

The closing of the ASSESS 2016 Congress was earmarked by a highlighted need to form alliances to develop harmonized visions for Engineering Simulation across industry, academia, government, professional organizations, and CAx vendors. To develop this harmony, each member needs to implement “win-win” collaborative business scenarios for all facets. By working in tandem, future model-based analysis, simulation and systems engineering can be focused on developing Engineering Simulation environments for experiencing real-time multi-physical response simulations. The ASSESS Initiative community aims to take the challenge of targeting realistic simulation of problems at the speed of human thought!