Building a framework for the future

The development of large-scale products poses complex problems, not least of which is enabling collaboration between often widely-dispersed organisations. Clemens-August Thole of SIMDAT says his project can use numerical simulation to solve these problems, and others besides.

 With modern business growing increasingly complex, companies are finding themselves ever-more reliant on technologies that can support development between widely-dispersed independent organisations grouped in partnerships and supply chains. The SIMDAT project, comprising 27 partners spread across Germany, France, Belgium and the UK, aims to use grid technology to fulfil the growing need for such technologies. Grids are a major enabler of improved collaboration and of virtual organisations, thus they have a crucial role to play in facilitating collaboration between project partners.

SIMDAT is focused on developing a Grid solution portfolio designed specifically to meet the needs of industry, the portfolio offers Grid technologies and Grid-enabled problem-solving environments that can be used to build domain-specific solutions. “Our goals are to support collaborative product and process development in industry,” says Clemens-August Thole of the Fraunhofer Institute SCAI in Sankt Augustin, one of the driving forces pushing the development of the project. “We are industry-focused,” he continues. “We aim to support distributed process and product development, not necessarily distributed usage of computing resources.”

Developed with an emphasis on practical usage to support development in the meteorological, pharmacological, automotive and aerospace sectors, SIMDAT technologies are flexible enough to allow them to perform a number of roles, in contrast to many existing collaborative design tools. SIMDAT has close links with major companies including GlaxoSmithKline, British Aerospace, EADS, Renault and Audi: ssharing of information and knowledge between partners can help to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of the end product.

Technologies like SIMDAT allow for both improved product and process development and give strategically crucial European industries a key competitive advantage over their rivals. However, the benefits of SIMDAT technologies will be felt as much by the general public as by industry. Car safety will be improved, aircraft and automotive noise will be minimised, pharmacological development will be accelerated, and weather predictions will be more reliable, benefits that should be widely appreciated.

Published: Monday, 9th November 2009

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