Carmaker Jaguar Land Rover has deployed Dassault Systemes 3D Experience software to aid in its simulation and testing efforts, but the key to unlocking the software's true potential lies in making wide-ranging changes at the company.

That's according to Jose Garcia-Urruchi, head of digital engineering capability at Jaguar Land Rover. He has created a list of seven key enablers that he shared in a live-streamed presentation.

"We cover quite a big range within Jaguar Land Rover," Garcia-Urrachi explained. "We go from an extreme case of off-road with the Defender, all the way to a sports car like the Jaguar F-Type. In order to cover that much range we have to rely on advanced simulation."

"This range of products we cover makes it simply impossible to rely heavily on testing," he continued. "There is a desire to go from eight to twelve weeks on design to having the CAE results to one day. Effectively, we want to go beyond that. We want to be in a position where we can assess the functional attributes of any design, live."

"We appreciate that this might never happen. This might be a little bit too ambitious to have that feedback, that CAE feedback, live, but this is where we aspire to be. Eight to twelve weeks is totally unacceptable in this day and age. One day, we are targeting that in the next two years, but moving to a position where it is much, much quicker."

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"This is something that we call the engineering continuum. It is a concept we introduced a few months ago that encapsulates that vision of live feedback. A better representation of the physics, multi-physics simulation, solver runtime, and multi-disciplinary optimization, while important, are no longer our highest priority. For many years, when talking about the integration of modeling and simulation. We have considered things like the better presentation of the physics."

"In most of those areas, we are in a position where what we’ve got is good enough and they are no longer our highest priorities. They are very, very important, let me emphasize this, but they are no longer the most important thing for us."

Garcia-Urrachi went on to outline the points that he thinks are the most important for exploiting 3D Experience effectively:

The key enablers we at Jaguar Land Rover require in order to make our vision of an engineering continuum a reality.

#1: Synchronization between the Engineering Bill of Materials (EBOM) and the Simulation Bills of Materials (SBOMS).

With 3D Experience, we’ve got the perfect platform to enable this, but we are still not there. We make continuous changes with the Engineering Bill of Materials that reflect the evolution of the design of our products. It still takes a rather long time to create a Simulation Bill of Materials.

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This integration between CAD and CAE has to cover all the way the changes in the Engineering Bill of Materials and these changes happen very, very frequently. We need to be sure we can create a simulation bill of materials as soon as we have the optimization.

#2 Automation of the model build process.

This is an area we have talked about for many years. We have made some progress in this respect. But if we want to get to our ambition of live feedback from the CAE then the model build process has to be completely automated.

For many years we have been accepting geometry upstream, from the designers. Then we in the CAE world, we had to simplify. We are changing that now. We expect the geometry to be created in a way that can be processed very quickly for CAE.

So there is no resistance anymore within the CAD community to change the CAD methods if necessary in order to create CAE models as quickly as we possibly can. We don’t need to be apologetic anymore within the CAD community and can demand that they create geometry in certain ways so that we can automate the process.

What we need to make sure of is that the CAD community understands what is required of them so that the geometry they create can be automatically used.

#3 Model-Based System Engineering (MBSE) models feeding geometry-based simulations and vice-versa.

Electrification and autonomy have changed the landscape of the automotive industry. Take, for example, a braking system. Not long ago a braking system was separate, and it was an electro-mechanical system, pretty self-contained. That’s no longer the case.

Now with regenerative braking, the powertrain is involved in braking too. This is an illustration of our systems becoming very complex.

Model-based systems engineering is something that we are pushing very hard on within Jaguar Land Rover. We now have some wonderful tools that enable us to do model-based systems engineering better than we have ever done before.

We want to make sure that we can feed the 3D models from our system models. But just as importantly, we want to make sure we use detailed system models in order to refine the system models.

The connection of 1D to 3D has to work both ways. So 1D informs 3D, but also the detailed simulations are used in order to refine the system models.

#4 Access to up-to-date and traceable non-geometric data.

Non-geometric data for a long time has been the poor brother or the poor sister of CAE and CAD. It is important not to ignore the importance of handling non-geometric data appropriately.

The simulation models are only as good as the information that you put in them. Having access to the right material data and other non-geometric data is absolutely key.

We need to make sure this is no longer the poor sister or poor brother in the whole CAD and simulation world.

#5 Characterization of the functional attributes of a design in the face of millions of possible variants.

A problem that we are battling with at the moment is, “What is a nominal car?” When you look at our models for the Defender, you can customize ad infinitum. The reality is we have millions, sometimes billions of possible combinations of a car.

So when it comes to characterizing the functional attributes of a car, which car are we referring to? This is not trivial at all and we haven’t got a solution for it. It is very likely that the solution for this issue will require a different view, approaching this problem from a different level.

Chances are we’ll need to introduce probabilistic analysis to evaluate the validity of our cars. Because we no longer have a nominal car that is representative of all possible combinations.

#6 Organization design that enables the optimum breakdown of the system into subsystems and components.

Organization design: this is rather difficult but is absolutely essential. In most automotive companies, we are organized around the design of a car that is no longer representative of a car of today.

Think of the example of the brake system. In the past, that would be done by the chassis team, and they would work pretty much in isolation in order to develop a braking system. Today, in the concept of electric cars where we want to recover the energy, so all of a sudden the system spans across many areas of the organization.

The problem that we’ve got is that we need to move away from organizing ourselves according to technology that is now no longer applicable, cars that are no longer applicable today.

It is very important that we organize ourselves around the technology and the type of cars that we do rather than organize the breakdown into systems and components following a model which is completely obsolete.

So at Jaguar Land Rover, we think the effect of 3D Experience is being done with a massive reorganization exercise that we are going through across the company. For the first time in decades now we are reorganizing ourselves to make the most of the technology that is available to us.

So 3D Experience has prompted a company-wide reorganization. Which is great to see. It is very important not to underestimate the importance of organizational design in order to make the most of the technology

#7 Engineers who, although specialized in one discipline, have a wide working-level knowledge.

It is true that we are trying to democratize the CAD and simulation worlds, but we still need specialists and will continue to need specialists in the areas for a rather long time, forever. You need specialists to develop your templates, to develop your workflows.

But increasingly we are expecting our engineers to be specialized in one discipline but at the same time to have a much wider of other functions. It is what we say are “T-shaped” engineers. Tee, because the vertical of the specialized in one specific area, but the top of the tee, this is what illustrates that you need to be able to work in areas that are outside of your area of expertise.

Our products are becoming more complex, so being specialized in the area of brakes is no longer enough. There is an expectation for all of our engineers that at the very least they need to have some working-level knowledge of more areas than they have been specialized in.