Molly Heskitt, Senior Director of Global Electronics and Consumer Goods, Altair
There is no question that we spend a lot of time staring at our phones… but isn’t there a better way to design an addictive device that can better manage the demands of consumers’ everyday lives? Drop-test simulation on average in the industry stands between one to two weeks to set up, conduct and analyze.
Altair has made a major achievement in the electronics industry that is expected to significantly accelerate the development of new smartphones, tablets, home appliances and other consumer electronics while enabling engineers to create a wider range of durable designs.
Working together, Altair and Korea’s LG Electronics (LGE) have successfully created a seamlessly integrated drop-test simulation automation system enabling LG engineers to conduct virtual Smartphone drop tests within just 24 hours, saving almost one-third of the entire design cycle.
In the email interview with Molly Heskitt, Senior Director of Global Electronics and Consumer Goods, Altair gives more insight on simulation industry trends for consumer segment and Altair achievements to accelerate the developments in this industry. She also talks about their recent work with LGE to create integrated drop-test simulation automation system for LG engineers.
Tell us about the electronics design simulation industry.
Like any other industry, the traditional design and manufacturing approachin the electronics industry was “make-it and break-it”. However physical testing is a very time consuming and very costly process as it includes building a physical prototype, setting up test equipment, conducting the test, and inspecting after test,as well as processing and analyzing the test data, etc.This process has to be repeated for every single physical test and it is very lengthy and costly.It causes great challenges, especially to electronics companies since the electronics product design and development cycle is extremely short due to the market demand and global competition.
In most cases, electronics manufacturers do not have enough time to conduct as many tests on different designs as they would like to gain a deeper understanding of the products’ behavior to improve product design and deliver more competitive products to market.
Thanks to advanced simulation technology, a simulation-driven design approach replaces fabricating and testing of numerous physical prototypes today in the electronics industry. Simulation technology has become a strategic tool integrated into the product design and development process in the leading electronics companies worldwide.
Simulation technology not only reduces the number of physical tests needed,which results in shorter product development cycles and lower cost, but also enables engineers to check and inspect all the important product components.This includes the very inner components of a product, which are difficult, if not impossible, to see in a physical setting to gain better understanding of what is happening internally in the device at any given time during the physical event. This provides engineers with the ability to visualize the root cause and gain far deeper insight to explore design alternatives to optimize product performance and prevent failures. Ultimately this approach leads to more innovative and better products.
There is no doubt that adoption of simulation-driven design will increase as electronics companies continue to strive to launch ever more unique and innovative products in record time.
What are the key trends and advancements that are impacting the consumer electronics segment?
As simulation technology has been adopted by most companies across different industries worldwide, methods and technologies have advanced to meet the growing requirements over the years.
Today, simulation automation and optimization are in high demand and bring the simulation driven design to the next level.
The electronics industry in particular undergoes a mind numbing pace of change today more than ever and the pressure on electronics companies to quickly deliver innovative products at a lower cost is intense. Today the electronics product design cycle has shortened from a year to just a few months, so the time available for simulation and design exploring is getting squeezed.
For any product virtual test or simulation, it is still time consuming compared to the extremely shortened design cycle because engineers have to manually create the simulation model, set up an analysis deck, complete post-processing, and explore the results.While simulation is markedly faster and more cost effective compared to physical testing, it still needs improvement to meet today’s design and development speed. For example, manually performing a drop simulation for a new smartphone design can still take one to two weeks for experienced engineers.
The need to reduce simulation turn-around-time and reduce non-value add tasks involved will allow more time for design engineers to more fully explore new products’ design alternatives to deliver new technology and innovation within shrinking design cycles. Introducing simulation automation is becoming a high priority for many electronics companies to maximize the impact of simulation driven design to their success. Additionally, beyond the cost and time savings realized, implementing automation enables engineers to capture their corporate knowledge and best practices in a standardized workflow process, increasing the reliability and repeatability of simulation results across the enterprise.
Also, many leading electronics companies realize how important optimization technology is to empower their engineers and designers to quickly conceive more innovative solutions to complex designs and minimize product cost and material usage for “greener” products.It allows engineers to explore all design alternatives and optimize product designs for performance quickly.
Altair’s advanced simulation and process automation technologies, coupled with the experience of Altair’s global consulting organization, delivers highly automated engineering solutions to many leading electronics companies around the world. This helps them dramatically shorten product development cycles and time to market. Specializing in simulation driven design methodologies and structural optimization, Altair rapidly implements these solutions such that they are broadly accessible to solve complex problems and labor intensive tasks.
Can you share details about drop test simulation automation system? How is it improving electronics design?
All manufacturers need to ensure high quality, reliability, and durability (QRD) to protect their market share and reputation among consumersas well as to reduce warranty costs. Manufacturers need to conduct many different tests during product development. Drop testing is one of the most important and common tests required. In particular for consumer electronics manufacturers, drop testing is very critical since, as consumers, we all often accidentally drop our electronic gadgets in different situations. We expect our gadgets to survive those drops.
As a result, electronics companies have to conduct many drop tests to represent the different drop circumstances that happen in real life, and do it very quickly within the extremely short design and development cycle. Drop simulation has been broadly used as a virtual drop testing tool.
However, manually setting up, conducting and post processing drop simulation is still time consuming, and cannot meet today’s fast product design pace. So automated drop simulation system is in high demand.
Altair understands this challenge and requirement. Utilizing our advanced simulation and process automation technologies, Altair’s global consulting organization leveraged its extensive automation experience and created a drop simulation automation system to automate the laborious, manual tasks associated with model setup, analysis, post-processing and reporting.
This system can dramatically reduce drop simulation time, accelerate electronics product design and development time, and reduce costs while enhancing product robustness and performance. Additionally, the system enables engineers to capture knowledge and best practices in standard workflow processes. This increased the reliability and repeatability of drop simulation results enterprise wide.
Engineers can use the time freed up by the drop-test simulation automation system to explore more iterations of the device’s design to develop a more robust and innovative version.
What are the complications and challenges for engineers in designing the system?
Using a smartphone as an example electronics device, it contains over a hundred components all packed in an extremely small package. To ensure simulation accuracy, all the components, assemblies and their connections need to be represented properly. A few key considerations include:
Getting a deep understanding of our users’ requirements and their current processes to integrate those into the system.
Designing one consolidated automation tool that suits various complex geometric models.
Keeping the tool open for future enhancements and additions, like enabling plugNplay features and developing the tool in a modular approach.
Complex geometry models.
The simulation automation system provided by Altair to automate and standardize the simulation of these performance tests helps the engineer address the complexity of verifying the robustness of their designs.
What was the goal of introducing Altair’s Integrated drop test simulation with LG collaboration?
As one of the major global leaders in the smartphone market, LG Electronics faces a big challenge – like the entire smartphone industry – time to market,since the smartphone design cycle is down to a few months today. With such a short product design cycle, taking two weeks to conduct one smartphone drop simulation can cause design delays,causing engineers to not have enough time left to consider as many designs as they would like to optimize and improve product performance.
In order to produce more innovative and competitive smartphones for the market faster, LGE needed to utilize simulation technology more efficiently. The optimal goal was to be able to conduct smartphone drop simulation in 24 hours so LGE engineers can conduct more simulations to ensure the product robustness and explore more design alternatives.
Working together, Altair and LGE have successfully created a seamlessly integrated drop-test simulation automation system, which automated many of the time-consuming manual tasks associated with FEA modeling, analysis set up and post-processing to carry out the drop test simulation. As a result, LGE engineers now can conduct smartphone drop test simulations in less than 24 hours instead of one to two weeks.
Tell us more about this innovation and its benefits for engineers?
The drop test is one of the most critical tests for electronics products. Electronics manufacturers need to conduct many drop tests to represent the different drop or impact scenarios that happen in the real world, anduse themto study and improve product robustness and performance. Drop simulation is a broadly used, common tool in this regard.
Using advanced process automation technology, Altair’s drop simulation system automates the laborious, manual tasks associated with model setup, analysis, post-processing and reporting so engineers can use their time and engineering talent to optimize and improve product design and performance. Engineers can also easily follow the standard automated flow to ensure the consistent output of the drop simulation results and reducehuman error and mistakes. It is especially beneficial to new or inexperienced engineers in this regard since they can learn much faster and understand the company’s best practices.
What advantages and special benefits does it offer in the consumer segment?
All the consumer electronics companies face the time-to-market challenge today. Drop testing is a common and important test for all consumer electronics companies to ensure robust and reliable products for their consumers. Simulation technology becomes more and more important in the consumer product design and development processes. Drop simulation is important, a complex and highly repeated process, and its efficiency significantly impacts the consumer product development cycle and impacts product performance. All consumer electronics companies worldwide face this challenge and have the need to speed up drop the simulation process.
This automation enables engineers to quickly peel away the exterior skin and turn components on or off dynamically at any point during the drop event to understand what is happening internal to the device. This provides design engineers with the ability to visualize the root cause and get far deeper insight to explore design alternatives to prevent failures – all before tooling, material, build and test costs are incurred. Automation further accelerates this process, helping manufactures get to market faster with high quality devices containing the latest technology/components and desired user experience.
What are Altair’s plans to make the wide adoption of this innovation?
Drop test is one of the most important and common tests required and is conducted in many electronics companies worldwide on a daily basis. The need for automated drop simulation is big.
We see potentially broad adoption in any company interested in shortening analysis cycles and learning curves for product design and development teams, and who need to establish best practices and standardized results across their enterprise. Altair is continually striving to communicate the benefits of this solution through various mediums so other companies and industries are aware of the advantages of adopting these technologies.
Are you targeting other manufacturers as well?
Yes. Altair’s efforts to promote efficient design and simulation practices and technologies cross multiple industries and geographies. We continue to try to reach out to companies, whether engineering or manufacturing, to make sure they can realize the benefits of our solutions.
Can we have your insights on India electronics demand and Altair’s presence in the India market?
Electronics demand in India has increased dramatically in recent years. In particular the consumer electronics industry is growing very fast. For example, demand for telecom products is sky rocketing. It truly is becoming one of the most important potential electronics markets in the world. The high demand and huge potential growth due to current low penetration has attracted global players to India and many have made big investments to access the Indian market. It will in turn further accelerate the market growth.
Altair has significant operations in India that are an important part of the Altair global business. Fortunately, the biggest players are currently Altair customers and we are excited about the India electronics market potential and will strive to make sure our customers there have the full benefit from our experience and our solutions.
