Modeling and Simulation among U.S. Manufacturers: The Case for Digital Manufacturing

In partnership with Intersect360 Research, the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) conducted a broad-based survey of U.S. manufacturers regarding the current state of digital manufacturing technologies and the drivers and barriers to expanding adoption. This study reveals the desire and potential benefits of digital manufacturing for a broad range of companies, particularly the assistance needed by small and medium-size manufacturers (SMMs) and the partnerships they would seek.

The web-based survey received 321 qualified respondents from the U.S. manufacturing community. 258 (80%) of respondents came from some industrial or commercial manufacturing sector, with the other 63 (20%) coming from the supporting communities in academia, government agencies, or trade organizations. (See Table 1.) All respondents were asked a foundation of questions concerning the drivers and barriers to the adoption of advanced technologies. Commercial organizations were asked additional questions about the role they play in product design and the current level of digital manufacturing technologies they have deployed, among other topic areas.

Digital manufacturing is the use of advanced computing technologies to employ modeling and simulation techniques for engineering, testing, or design purposes. By creating a digital model of a product, a manufacturer can perform a wide range of tests, such as manufacturability analysis or performance testing, before physically building a new design. Some of the potential benefits are improved product quality, shorter time to market, and reduced manufacturing costs.

Table 1: Survey Participants by Industry / Sector
Source: Intersect360 Research, NCMS, 2010

Industry/Sector	Count
Aerospace	47
Automotive	31
Consumer Products	5
Defense / Homeland Security Contractor	49
Health Care / Pharmaceuticals	2
IT and electronics	14
Other (industry)	110
Total industry	258
Academic	12
Government Agency	30
Other (non-industry)	11
Trade or industry association	10
Total non-industry	63
TOTAL	321

The largest automotive, aerospace, and heavy equipment manufacturers in the U.S. have used high performance computing (HPC) technologies1 for digital manufacturing for decades. In fact, large-product manufacturing is the largest consuming commercial vertical market for HPC.2 Application areas at these companies run through the full cycle of computer-aided engineering (CAE), from conceiving new products to failure testing and maintenance of older ones.

Intersect360 Research estimates about half of CAE usage at automotive and aerospace companies to fall into various categories of solids testing and engineering, including concepts such as structural analysis and crash testing. About half of the rest goes to computational fluid dynamics (CFD), including aerodynamics testing in virtual wind tunnels. The remaining workflow is mostly spent on environmental analysis, such as noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) testing, but also on process engineering, statistics analysis, and other tasks.

Despite the wide range of available applications and the well-established precedent of large companies successfully employing scalable HPC for engineering, there is a significant gap between the digital manufacturing capabilities of large manufacturers at the deployment (or lack of deployment) at SMMs.

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Source: Intersect 360 Research