Siemens PLM Software, a division of Siemens Automation and Drives since the acquisition of UGS last year, says it has achieved a series of milestones in CAE (computer-aided-engineering) in terms of major users, new people and new software.
Substantial business wins are at the top of its list. Siemens cites Liao He Petroleum, a key part of China National Petroleum, which owns the third largest oilfield in China, and the Franco-German-Spanish Eurocopter Group.
It quotes Gao Yuanwen, IT director at Liao He, as saying: “The rich large assembly and assembly analysis capabilities of [Siemens PLM] NX are an important reason why it attracted us.
This combined with the NX Nastran solver and the pre and post processors, as well as integration with NX CAD, finally enabled us to make our choice. We are already beginning to gradually achieve our expected goal.”
And for Eurocopter Group, it quotes Christopher Bach, praising Femap and NX Nastran, which the company is using for stress analysis and substantiation of military helicopter systems. “The integrated Visual Basic interface of Femap provides an unchallenged way to integrate our calculation tools to aid in further post-processing, substantiation and documentation of stress analysis, particularly composite structures, leading to a faster automated process,” he says.
On the people side, Siemens PLM Software has appointed Ken Blakely, a 23-year veteran of MSC.Software and the digital lifecycle simulation industry, as vice president, CAE Business Development. Blakely, who reports to John Graham (above), Siemens PLM Software executive vice president of Global Sales & Services, will work with the marketing and products groups on sales programmes designed to grow Siemens in CAE globally.
“These key customer wins go a long way not only toward highlighting our growing momentum in CAE, but also toward demonstrating the value that our CAE solutions add in spanning the enterprise and mid-market levels,” says Graham. “Ken’s mission is essentially to facilitate our growth goals for CAE by leveraging the resources of the entire business. We now have a recognised leader in our sales organisation fully devoted to CAE.”
Despite the hype, Siemens attention to CAE comes at a good time. A new report from management consultancy Spar Point Research, for example, finds that companies are increasingly making CAE analysis pervasive throughout product development from early concept design through manufacturing engineering.
The report, entitled ‘Enabling Digital Simulation and Analysis’, studied simulation best practices at companies in nearly every industry sector, including aerospace and defence, aircraft engine, automotive powertrain, consumer electronics, medical device and off-highway equipment.
“While the companies we studied came from very different industries, they are looking for the same key enablers in simulation technology,” says Bruce Jenkins, president of research at Spar Point. “These key functional enablers will allow leading companies to deploy digital simulation pervasively throughout the product lifecycle. Siemens PLM Software is at the forefront in addressing these enablers.”
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