Super Designer: The Accelerating Drive for Change
by Don Brown

Accelerating technological innovation, coupled with intensifying international competition, forces radical changes across many industries. In the automotive sector in particular, the combination impacts all employees - top to bottom across the supply chain.

Rising international competition intensifies the pressures for change. Lean manufacturing principles from the Japanese broke the oligopoly power of the Big Three in Detroit years ago. The highly popular book, The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production, drove the message home in plain, fully understandable, and painful English - well after the trend had accomplished its most dramatic effect. Today, a manager in discrete manufacturing must be out of touch with reality if he or she does not understand the stakes involved with the next phase - the rationalization of design across the supply chain. Whoever succeeds in driving down the development cycle from a range of around 20 months may not just win big, but win period, driving out and/or absorbing competitors.

Lean manufacturing and declining DoD (Department of Defense) budgets left deep scars, without even involving technology. Now, piled on top of the trends already set in motion, comes the ever-accelerating innovation wave of technology. The cost of computing has plummeted since the 1950s by over 30% annually. Steve Rohde of GM, for example, calculates that his index of computing costs fell from $30,000 in 1960 to $.02 in the year 2001 for the same capability. In that time, the price on a Buick LeSabre rose to $25,000 from $3,000, while an engineer's salary hit $35,000, up from $6,0001.

The manufacturing sector in general and the automotive industry specifically were already severely pressed in design because technical constraints in solid modeling, feature based design and data management delayed full optimization. From an historical perspective, the cost of computing comes virtually for free, compared to other production costs. That virtually free computing in the form of the web and Internet converges with lean engineering on the supply chain to expand the scope of concerns by an order of magnitude.

Driven by technological innovation, the dramatic change in the relative cost of production factors and prices affect all functions across all businesses, and redefine the roles of design, manufacturing, and purchasing personnel across the supply chain. As one step in their efforts to manage the pace of change, four tier-one suppliers, a major OEM, Deere & Co. and one office equipment manufacturer joined a research program from D.H. Brown Associates, Inc. (DHBA) to concentrate on the issues directly confronting the Super Designer's up front CAE effort in the design process.

The Context for Moving Designers to Engineering
The context and scope of concerns related to the future roles for designers, analysts and engineers has a dramatic impact on the priorities accorded critical conclusions, and on the mandate for action.

Core Educational and Career Aspects
Approached conservatively, any program concerned with the up front use of CAE tools simply concentrates on making designers more effective. Since many in the automotive arena working as designers have not progressed beyond drafting and CAD, the educational programs may aim simply at making the students better designers by teaching them basic engineering. The efforts encourage them to ask the right questions of the analysts, and contribute to a better understanding of the geometry requirements for easier auto meshing. The scope for training often starts with fundamental engineering and design, and pragmatically targets reasonably achievable goals. Ultimately, more ambitious efforts that move designers up to fully degreed engineering will be required.

Most automotive firms today run conventional organizations with separate and well-defined roles for designers, degreed engineers, and analysts. Designers may interface a little with the analyst and testing communities. But the two may not directly communicate. Most often, the analysts first approach the engineer, and then they include the designer in discussions.

As David Luik from MSX International notes, two problems arise organizationally. First, the communication and direction between the design leaders, designers, and the engineers involves much wasted time. Second, "the engineer, to a certain extent, is being wasted.… They seem to be the go-between, more of a communication focal point as opposed to hands-on design and hands-on analysis." These dual trends suggest the designer and/or the engineer has to move up in responsibilities. As separate functional roles, both are not needed, and entail "wasting a lot of time communicating among the designer, the engineer, and the analyst."

"The convergence of roles at MSX International parallels the trends taking place with the OEMs as well. That means the virtual world replaces hardware," Luik continues. Also of note, analysts and engineers, as well as designers, become design engineers. Indeed, ALL of those involved with design must redefine their roles and responsibilities.

Among CAE specialists, continuous educational programs and career development represent a fact of life. That outlook colors their vision, and significantly improves the likelihood that the analysts will successfully transition to design engineers.

That may also bias the CAE specialists' conclusions on the optimistic side regarding designers. An hourly mentality of the designer toward the job presents a cultural challenge requiring a major shift in attitude. Not all regard the educational programs upgrading their skill sets as an opportunity. Not all will make the transition. In part, those who are late in their career will not go back to school at this point in time in their lives. True, pilot programs suggest that the level of detail work that will still be required in the future will keep a reasonable proportion of the design force busy. But fundamentally, the transition represents a career change that involves different skill sets, and different personality profiles.

Warranties and Manufacturing
The dimensions of the issues directly related to the role of Super Designers, however, take a huge leap when warranty issues are considered in the discussion. Indeed, warranty presents one of the biggest problems facing the automotive industry today, involving billions of dollars. At least some research partners conclude that a program addressing the Super Designer will fail without solid and meaningful metrics around the whole effort, including warranty. In David Luik's view at MSX International, "It will never get the attention. That's why I keep going back to warranty. I know that grabs people's attention because it's such a huge amount of money. If we can measure the impact on warranties, it's going to raise eyebrows."

The dimensions of the issues take a second big leap when the very different concerns of manufacturing are considered. Both Delphi and MSX International clearly conclude that product design and tooling design need to be done simultaneously. Because the process today remains sequential, it creates a huge waste of time and effort in dealing with the information, processing it, transferring it, and then having a whole set of different people do tool designs. Paralleling the same trends involved with the Super Designer, manufacturing engineers face a similar need to acquire in-depth knowledge of product design, analysis, and engineering functions in manufacturing. Manufacturing and tooling personnel face a parallel educational requirement to move up into the design and simulation arena, and to join conceptual design up front. Otherwise, rework voraciously consumes time and resources late in the product cycle, when the rework wrecks the most damage. As pressing as the convergence of simulation and design, CAE and CAD appear for the Super Designer, the same dramatic need arises for one person to fully understand both the product and tooling requirements up front on the design team. Intermixed with analysis and product design, tool design must be covered.

Admittedly, the points raised by warranties and manufacturing reflect very different concerns that lie outside the specific critical issues of this project, which focuses on the Super Designer as a design engineer. However, those directly responsible for implementing and managing a program for the Super Designer must also take note that parallel trends affecting other functions and areas rebound back on the Super Designer and raise the ante. Those parallel trends both increase urgency and accelerate the timing for upgrading skill sets across both design and manufacturing.

Driving Down the Design Cycle
Once the concept of the Super Designer is extended to consider related but very different parallel issues of warranty and tooling, it becomes obvious that a comprehensive definition of the critical up front issues in general facing the automotive industry must be considered. Those trends having the most direct impact target the time-to-market, the shortening of design cycles, the reduction of physical prototyping, and the speed up of manufacturing cycles.

David Luik comments, "The goal for the automotive industry now targets a 12-month product-development cycle. Depending on whom you talk to, the 24-month cycle may be the norm today, and even that starts at what we call "styling freeze." The trick now is to get down to 12 months. One of the barriers we're running into is that there's no room. Back up and start playing with the time it takes to get the plant ready, and changed over. Then take the Big One, our tooling times. Literally, only a couple of months remain to do a complete design of the vehicle.3"

A conservative and narrow viewpoint reviewing the critical issues related to up front CAE concentrates on the roles and education of designers in terms of managing a conventional organization. The concepts may then take three leaps across very different but related concerns derived from parallel trends impacting warranties and tooling. Indeed, the goal of a 12-month development cycle provides the comprehensive context for a successful Super Designer program. Moreover, at the same time the implication remains that any program must fully establish solid and meaningful metrics around the whole effort addressing all three aspects, or it will fail. These conclusions in combination suggest that the automotive industry faces radical change, a full paradigm shift.

1. GM's Journey to Math: The Virtual Vehicle, Steve M. Rohde, General Motors Corporation, presentation delivered at D.H. Brown Associates, Inc.'s (DHBA) annual conference, Implementation Road Map 2001, November 13-14, 2001 (http://www.dhbrown.com/dhbrown/SuperD/Jan02/Rohde.pdf).
   
   See also, Virtual Factory Engineering at GM, General Assembly, Nick Andreou, P.E., Manufacturing Math Modeling, Group Manager, General Motors, presentation delivered at DHBA's annual conference, Implementation Road Map 2001, November 13-14, 2001 (http://www.dhbrown.com/dhbrown/SuperD/Jan02/Andreou.pdf).
2. In our experience, benchmarking has demonstrated a very high value for enhancing the confidence of managers through direct meetings and communications with their peers, and the sharing of mutual experiences. The approach also broadens any inquiry to cover the full scope of critical issues, while deepening the mutual understanding of user requirements. Even so, benchmarking voraciously consumes time and resources. Participants must spend a significant period of time in getting to know each other to even begin to establish a mutual understanding.

   Our Research Simulation Council employs traditional disciplined research methodologies coupled with the direct personal contacts of benchmarking approaches to derive the maximum value while minimizing the time requirements for each individual's participation. Six individual research position papers provided the background on specific issues, and on the experiences and positions of both individuals and companies, which greatly facilitated meaningful discussions. Two conference calls focused in on the critical issues. The summaries of three of these reports and background on the conference calls are publicly available to all, as noted below.
   
   

3. The Context for Moving Designers to Engineering, Collaborative Research Contributor: David Luik, MSX International, December 2001 (http://www.dhbrown.com/dhbrown/SuperD/Jan02/ex011203.pdf). See also, Super Designer: Up Front CAE, Research Contributors and Guest Panelists: Greg Roth, Eaton Corporation, James Crosheck, P.E., Ph.D., Deere & Company, October 2001 (http://www.dhbrown.com/dhbrown/SuperD/Jan02/ex011007.pdf).

   See also, Super Designer: Embedding CAE in CAD, Collaborative Research Contributor: John Swanson, Staff Engineering Manager, CAE, CAD/CAM Development and Design Groups, Delphi Energy and Chassis, Delphi Automotive Systems, January 2001 (http://www.dhbrown.com/dhbrown/SuperD/Jan02/ex020103.pdf). For copies of the full reports of these three papers, please visit http://dhbrown.com/dhbrown/02SuperDesigner.cfm.

   See also background briefing material for two audio teleconferences covering critical research issues in analyses, which served to screen and recruit participants in the Super Designer research effort.
   
   

   • The first covered the topic of Reliability and Consistency Reconsidered, on July 26, 2001 with guest panelists Shah Yunus and Yehuda Volpert (http://dhbrown.com/dhbrown/events_01SuperJuly.cfm). Shah worked for ANSYS Inc. (formerly Swanson) from 1984 to 1999, before founding his own consulting firm. Most recently, he served as the strategist for ANSYS reporting to Peter Smith, and previously he counseled John Swanson. Yehuda Volpert took his Ph.D. from Washington University, under Barna Szabo. He worked with Allied Signal, and Israel Aircraft, before joining ADAPCO as a consultant in Long Island.
     
     
   • The second conference call covered Metrics and Culture for the Super Designer, on September 6, 2001 with Greg Roth from Eaton Corporation, and James Crosheck from Deere & Company (http://dhbrown.com/dhbrown/events_01SuperSept.cfm). Gregory Roth, Senior Engineering Specialist in the Virtual Prototype Department at Eaton Corporation's Innovation Center in Southfield Michigan, spearheaded the firm's efforts to streamline CAD/CAE product-development processes. Previously, he worked at Ford Motor Company for ten years in various CAD/CAE groups in the U.S. and Europe. Through December of last year, James E. Crosheck, P.E., Ph.D., served as Senior Staff Engineer for the Deere & Company Technical Center. There, he fulfilled split responsibilities between supporting the selection of electronic tools for the product-development process, and leading the analytic support of the integrated test and analysis effort directed at analytic prediction of structural durability. Jim now works as an independent consultant and can be reached at eesllc1@aol.com