Today it is a given that products are tested, airplanes flown and automobiles driven before even one single part has been manufactured. The advance of virtualization in product development has already almost made us forget the time, money and effort involved in styling, development, prototyping, testing and production planning just a decade ago. An important driving force behind this development are the systems for simulation and computation (Computer Aided Engineering (CAE)) and the steadily increasing range of functionality they provide. The digital revolution associated with these systems has made it possible to introduce innovative new products with increasingly complex systems onto the market economically in ever-shorter cycles while at the same time making these products progressively safer and more environmentally friendly, among many other things.

The use of CAE systems has had a significant impact on fundamental aspects of the product development processes, and it is now of strategic importance to companies.

Although the importance of simulation has increased so significantly over the past few years, it is usually anchored – as in the early days – in product development. Departments involved in simulation and computation often constitute information technology islands in what is otherwise an integrated development process chain. “Integration” is more likely to be of the interpersonal kind and communication functions upon request. This means that data retrieval alone, i.e. compiling all the data and information required to execute a simulation or computation, becomes a time-consuming and, for the most part, error-prone affair (cf. Figure 1).

Since the development of a product is an ever-ongoing process, but changes are only communicated to the departments involved with simulation and computation indirectly, if at all, computations are often carried out for a product which no longer actual exists in this particular form. It is apparent to anyone that this is a waste of resources. There is an urgent need for solutions that allow design engineering, on the one hand, and simulation and computation, on the other hand, to be harmonized better – and with the aid of computers, if possible. Bearing in mind that today’s development processes are often distributed globally over a number of different companies, and products need to be developed in ever-shorter cycles, it becomes even more obvious just how necessary such solutions are. Although product data management systems (PDM systems) have long provided design engineering with support relating to its data management and process flows, anyone looking for comparable solutions for simulation and computation will often look in vain.

However, if end-to-end process chains are to be realized and thus time and cost advantages exploited and process reliability increased, it is exactly this type of solution that is needed (cf. Figure 2), i.e. solutions for the integration of simulation and computation in a PDM environment. It is the companies which provide their employees with the right amount of right information and data for simulation and computation at the right time, with the right level of quality that have a strategic advantage over the competition.

The objective of the ProSTEP iViP Association’s SimPDM (Integration of Simulation and Computation in a PDM Environment) Project Group is to accept these challenge and provide uniform solutions. The ProSTEP iViP Association has compiled this White Paper to provide its members with information about the SimPDM Project Group and the results that this Project Group has achieved.