Serve, set, spike – valuable lessons from volleyball applied to simulation process and data management (SPDM)

A few years ago, I made a major transition as a parent when my youngest son, after 12 years of playing basketball, decided to start playing volleyball. Up until that time, I had viewed volleyball as a game in which six players hit a ball back and forth over a high net, trying to make the ball touch the court on the opponent’s side. Little did I know how strategic and complex the whole game was. For starters, there’s the jargon. Players are not hitting the ball. They’re bumping, tipping, digging, wiping and swiping. And surely we shouldn’t forget about the spike, the pancake, the waffle or the crepe (honestly!). More importantly, it’s not just six players. I got to learn about the libero, opposite, setter, middle blocker, outside hitter and their specific roles and contributions to the game.

I found the latter to be quite interesting. Because in our domain of simulation process and data management (SPDM), we are similarly aware that not all our end users have the same role and contribution. That would also be a naïve simplification of reality. Sure, many SPDM users are analysts dealing with simulation and physical testing most of the time. And SPDM is there to help them be efficient, support their processes and keep their data secure and traceable. But depending on which tools they use and at what stage of the product lifecycle the analyst is engaged, the support they require can differ widely.

Who are the players on the SPDM court?

Let’s first take a look at a fluids and thermal engineer who’s responsible for validating the thermal flow and cooling efficiency of the latest heat exchanger design for a hand drill. In this case, we are pretty much advanced in the development cycle of the hand drill, and the design will consist of many detailed parts assembled into the product. Not to forget that all those parts will already have been through many design cycles to improve functional performance, manufacturability, cost, weight, etc. What you need as an analyst is to have a clear overview, access to the design revisions of these parts directly from the tool and to have the ability to swap revisions in and out as needed as you analyze the performance of the different options. What you don’t want is to be spending your time on keeping track of all your changes and analysis.

Well, those two things are exactly what the tight integration between Teamcenter Simulation SPDM and Simcenter STAR-CCM+ accomplishes and you can read all about that in this blog post.

So here we have an analyst who is truly and tightly connected to the product design lifecycle thanks to dedicated tools and tool integrations with SPDM software. The analyst consumes design data directly from the PLM system and consistently writes back analysis results.

Not forgetting the outside hitter

Not all analysis processes can be so neatly integrated – think of specific industries where verifications have to be performed with specific certified tools that run only in a very specific environment or operating system, have poor or non-existent interfaces, and can only consume specifically formatted input data. In this case the analyst is likely using a lot of local tools to pre-process, solve, and post-process data in local folders with very limited connection to the product lifecycle managed in PLM. How we can help these users become connected? 

In our previous release of Teamcenter Simulation SPDM software (see blog here), we delivered a new desktop application which provides one-click access for simulation engineers to upload models and result data to the Teamcenter database without needing to know their way around the enterprise SPDM/PLM system in detail. For the latest 2412 release, we have further streamlined the usage of this desktop application, making sure that it is enabled for Single Sign On (SSO). Furthermore, we have invested further in structuring the data in Teamcenter Simulation in accordance with how end users want to see the data appear on their workstations. The specific capability that delivers this is called “CAEFolders” as and from Teamcenter Simulation 2412, such CAEFolders can be fully created and modified directly in the Teamcenter Active Workspace web browser client (where previously this was only possible with the Teamcenter Rich Client). We have also improved the structure and appearance of the file attachments page in the Active Workspace client, ensuring consistency and easy navigation to all critical information.

…and the setter

Finally, let’s turn our attention to those analysts working in tight collaboration with the product owners in the early stages of the product definition. In this stage, it’s very much about keeping track of product requirements and targets and about validating these through system simulation. The analyst is often very tightly involved in the iterations towards requirements and product targets but will strongly rely on SPDM to keep all the iterations consistent and aligned with the latest requirements and target setting.

This is where Teamcenter Simulation SPDM software plays a key role in ensuring the tight integration of Simcenter System Architect with Teamcenter Verification Management, allowing to carry over parameters directly from a verification request in Teamcenter to Simcenter System Architect. This allows you to seamlessly set up the simulation architectures in System Architect with the correct initial system parameters, and to validate the simulation architectures against pre-determined targets for the important system KPIs.

The result is streamlined execution of verifications and consistent traceability between requirements, parameters and simulations with the least possible manipulations.

You have to be in it to win it – the key to a successful SPDM game is to keep all players on the court!

Like John Kessel said: “Volleyball rules are simple. If it is on the floor, pick it up and get it into the air. If it is in the air, keep it off the floor.” Keeping things simple is often a good design directive. Keeping SPDM software simple for our analysts is exactly what we are targeting with the 2412 release of Teamcenter Simulation.