MSC Software streamlines engineering simulation for big businesses

The company, which last year brought on board big hitters Bill Weyand (ex SDRC) and Glenn Wienkoop (creator of Teamcenter, bought by UGS), has been through a sea change, and is now pushing the virtues of enterprise level, integrated, multi-disciplinary CAE environments in terms of reduced costs and, more importantly, faster, better development. Amir Mobayen, MSC Software senior vice president in charge of EMEA, says the new team has moved it from a technology company to a sales-orientated, enterprise level company. “We’ve invested massively in our Indian operations, and the strategy has been to pull forward our technology roadmap for 07/08 to 06,” says Mobayen. “We’re leveraging our standing in engineering analysis and moving the thinking from providing point solutions to integrated environments that will make a difference for our customers in automotive, aerospace and general manufacturing.” What’s this about? Mobayen makes the point that in larger organisations like Airbus, BMW, Audi and Bombardier Transportation, there are many CAD, CAM and specialist CAE applications – and these users need to integrate and harmonise them, consolidating to two or three vendors and getting economies in procurement and maintenance, as well as improvements in operational performance. “That’s why we started by integrating our solvers to provide a single data model, and releasing the multi-disciplinary Nastran,” he explains. And the proof of concept: 90 days after launch, MSC announced standardisation based around specific capabilities and applications of MD Nastran at BMW, followed by similar projects at Volvo 3P (trucks), NASA and Boeing”. Most recently, MSC Software has turned its MD environment approach to drive its next generation enterprise solutions, which are in line with manufacturers’ current moves to more process automation and optimisation. “SIM Enterprise is in three parts,” explains Mobayen. “SimDesigner is aimed at users that want to do their simulation work in the native CAD environment. SimXxpert is for specialists doing hard core massive analytics. And SimManager brings together multi-disciplinary, multi-site teams, managing all that in a structured environment and capturing knowledge and processes.” It’s about solving the problems around getting the right data to the right people at the right time in big or global organisations. And it’s also about ensuring continuity on longer projects – NASA being the classic example, with its ageing population of physicists. Worth watching MSC Software. The new organisation seems very on the ball. It has worked hard on its strategic alliances with major user customers, and likewise with the software and hardware vendor community, and its channels to market. Note that its new Impact Channel programme is aimed at making its simulation products available to smaller manufacturers and engineering consultancies in different sectors, via its resellers – which are being equipped with tools, training and additional support. “Executives are beginning to appreciate the tremendous business value they can obtain from simulation as an enabler to reduce time to market, lower costs, improve quality, and achieve product and process innovation,” says Alf Goebel, vice president of global channels, MSC.Software. “MSC Impact has been designed to bring resellers a broad array of benefits and resources to support their customers in this emerging space, and we believe this offering will be very highly received by the channel.”