THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO

IMPROVE PRODUCT
PERFORMANCE
 Introduction
The term ‘innovation’ has rapidly become the trendiest of
buzzwords. Regardless of its overuse, the need to conceive new
ideas that improve the performance of your product by increasing
overall capability and efficiency is no longer just a driver of
growth—it is essential for mere survival.

Incremental improvements to product quality and reductions in

cost and time-to-market used to be enough to create meaningful
competitive separation. But we have now reached a period where
the pace of innovation is faster than ever, and continues to increase
every day. Quality, cost, and speed are still important, but true
differentiation comes in the form of better performance.

The upside is that there are approaches to improving performance

that can be used systematically to increase the value and
competitiveness of your products. Through the practical application
of established technologies, such as simulation, and newer
offerings like generative design, you can explore more design
possibilities, get the most out of the design decisions you make,
and validate critical product requirements are met.

2 | THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO IMPROVING PRODUCT PERFORMANCE Image courtesy of Eugene Kim
 Identifying improvement opportunties
The first step in any performance improvement activity
is ensuring you are working on the right things.
Engineering time is limited, so every minute needs to be
dedicated to enhancements that customers truly value
and will have a high return for the business.

In the eBook, “How to Identify Opportunities to

Improve Product Performance,” we outlined several
innovation techniques that can help you build a better
understanding of customer needs and think through all
the options you have to make a better product. Paired
with the following information, you’ll be armed with the
techniques to come up with better ideas and execute on
them in the most efficient way possible.

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 CHALLENGES ADOPTING SIMULATION
To improve performance, you must first be able to
predict how your ideas will work. Using simulation
to test designs is currently the de facto approach for
understanding how your product will perform without
the need for prototypes. The number of physics
disciplines that can accurately be predicted has grown
steadily over the past several decades to encompass
nearly every problem imaginable. The usability of the
software has improved, along with faster processing
time due to hardware improvements and access to
the cloud. So why is it, then, that simulation is not
ubiquitously used by every engineer?
The longstanding hang-up on simulation is that it’s
difficult to use. This stems from two sources: the need
for engineering expertise and knowledge of how to use
the software. The engineering requirement is not going
away. Understanding the appropriate conditions to
evaluate and being able to interpret results to inform
design changes is fundamental. The bigger challenge
has been learning which options to use, what buttons
to push, and the preparation work required to get an
accurate result you can trust.
4 | THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO IMPROVING PRODUCT PERFORMANCE
The second issue with simulation is that it
simply takes too long. To realistically get to
the best possible design, countless iterations
would have to occur. Each iteration taking time
to prepare, process, and interpret. When time-
to-market is still critical to the success of the
product, this is a luxury not often afforded to
development teams.
Your approach to improving product
performance must address both challenges.
The tools now available to engineers
now go beyond simulation, and include
applications that are focused on optimization
and generative design that are built to be
incorporated into the flow of design, so you can
evaluate different possibilities and rapidly get
to the best design possible.
 IMPROVING
PERFORMANCE AT
EVERY STAGE IN THE
PROCESS
Throughout the design process there are varying degrees of
freedom available to make substantial improvements to the
design. Early on, the possibilities are wide open to explore
radically different concepts. As you progress further, the focus
narrows towards optimizing the big decisions made early on to
get as much out of the product as possible. And finally, before
entering production, it’s essential that an in-depth validation
occurs to ensure the product meets all established requirements.

5 | THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO IMPROVING PRODUCT PERFORMANCE

 EXPLORING DESIGN
POSSIBILITIES
In most development projects, the design process is focused on converging an initial idea into the best possible
solution to the challenge presented. At the concept stage, when the possibilities are practically limitless, big
decisions are typically made based primarily on experience or existing knowledge, and often use legacy designs
as the starting point for anything new. This has been the case for two reasons: there simply is not enough time to
evaluate all the possibilities and, with more complex products, it’s impossible to conceive every option. Selecting the
one that seems to have the most potential and then optimizing it is necessary to get the project completed on time.

6 | THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO IMPROVING PRODUCT PERFORMANCE

EXPLORING DESIGN POSSIBILITIES
Concept testing
How do you know if an idea is good or bad?
Experienced engineers are usually quite good at
sorting the promising from the potential failures.
Simulation can take it a step further to give more
definitive results to guide decision making. But
the trick isn’t just sifting through what’s there, it’s
also finding what’s missing.

The easiest way to start exploring more ideas is to

simply model and test radically different design
ideas up-front in the process. Bringing simulation
forward, whether it is used by the engineers
creating the models or by specialized analysts, can
quickly determine whether those ideas have merit.

Another option is to use topology optimization

tools that can reduce the mass of a component
by identifying and removing excess material
from the part while still maintaining or exceeding
performance criteria. By identifying the load
path through the part, you can experiment with
different loading conditions, change how it will
be fixtured, and possibly move the location or
orientation of loads to improve the performance
of the product and further reduce weight.
 EXPLORING DESIGN POSSIBILITIES
Generative design
These manual approaches to design exploration, while
better than not doing it at all, can still consume a
significant amount of time. The ideas generated are also
skewed to collective knowledge of the people involved.
For example, someone who is specialized in designing
injection molded parts will naturally gravitate toward a
plastic part when metal may be better. If disciplines are
underrepresented, options that may be perfect for the
application can be missed entirely.

Generative design is different. Design concepts

can be created that explore all feasible materials,
manufacturing options, and geometries within the
constraints setup by the engineer. The constraints
may define performance criteria, cost, allowable
manufacturing techniques, or boundaries of the
geometry. Hundreds or thousands of design variants are
then synthesized that meet those criteria—so not only
can more ideas be generated than humanly possible, but
they can be far more complex than imaginable.

Image courtesy of Briggs Automotive Company, Ltd.

8 ||THE
THEDEFINITIVE
DEFINITIVEGUIDE
GUIDETO
TOIMPROVING
IMPROVINGPRODUCT
PRODUCTPERFORMANCE
PERFORMANCE
 EXPLORING DESIGN POSSIBILITIES
Generative design
With generative design, optimal designs can often
be clearly identified for purely functional parts (such
as brackets or adapters) but products with more
complex elements or aesthetic considerations require
the interpretation of an engineer. Here is where you
can navigate the complete design space, looking at
feasible concepts in greater depths of detail until the
right design is identified and can be further refined or
optimized as needed.

Generative design is still in the early stages of

development and adoption, but as it matures and
becomes more widely available the ability to explore
more of your design space will be of huge benefit for
identifying new opportunities to improve product
performance.

Image courtesy of Briggs Automotive Company, Ltd.

THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO IMPROVING PRODUCT PERFORMANCE | 9

 OPTIMIZING DESIGN
DECISIONS
The next step is to optimize the high-level decisions you made during the exploration phase of the process. Optimization
is about tweaking all the variables and parameters involved to get as much out of the design as possible.

10 | THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO IMPROVING PRODUCT PERFORMANCE

 OPTIMIZING DESIGN DECISIONS
Iteration
Iteration is the key to optimization. The formula is quite
simple: the more iterations you can complete, the better
the result will be. Thus, the faster you can make each
design change, test the impact on performance, and
incorporate what you learn back into the design, the
faster you can reach the best possible product.
While the process itself is relatively manual—each
design change has to be modeled, each iteration has to
be setup and run in a simulation application, and results
have to be interpreted—there are ways to minimize
wasted time and effort.
To speed up the actual processing time,
using cloud solvers can offload the heavy
computational work from your machine, so you
can continue to work unencumbered. Since
the capacity for cloud solving is practically
unlimited, it’s also possible to run many
simulation jobs at once, further reducing the
time it takes to get all the results you need to
inform the design process.

The most time intensive aspect of this process is simply

setting up the simulation job to be carried out. The key
to minimizing this is with a close integration between
CAD and CAE. If your setup can update the model in the
simulation environment automatically, then the settings
for each job can be carried over as well. This eliminates
much of the time spent dialing in mesh settings and
applying loads, constraints, contacts, and materials.

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 OPTIMIZING DESIGN DECISIONS

PARAMETRIC DESIGN
OPTIMIZATION
To further increase the efficiency of the iteration process, another
option is to use parametric design optimization. This reduces
the amount of manual modeling required and eliminates having
to setup the model multiple times to evaluate different design
options.

When performing a parametric optimization, it’s first important

to determine which key variables you will want to evaluate and
ensure your model is robust and setup in a way so those changes
can be controlled. This can require a bit of time spent up front
thinking about what aspects of your model you want to evaluate,
but the time saved from having to manually edit each dimension is
well worth it.

From there, you simply setup the analysis as you typically would
and enter in the values for each variation you want to test. The
software then runs each analysis in parallel, so you can get the
full set of results at once and easily compare the outcomes of each
combination of variables.

Image courtesy of Osgood Industries

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 OPTIMIZING DESIGN DECISIONS

LIGHTWEIGHTING
If additive manufacturing is a possible production technique
for your product, then latticing is another option to improve
the performance of your product. This technique can effectively
reduce the weight of your product while still maintaining the
necessary strength and stiffness required and potentially provide
improved thermal characteristics as well.

The process for latticing works in much the same way as topology
optimization. It starts by applying the loads and constraints for
the part and then assigning the material to be used. The next
step is to choose from an array of lattice structures available to
generate the internal structure. Built-in stress analysis is used to
evaluate whether the generated geometry is acceptable, or it can
be exported and run for more detailed analysis in a dedicated FEA
application.

Image courtesy of Briggs Automotive Company Ltd.

13 | THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO IMPROVING PRODUCT PERFORMANCE

 VALIDATING DESIGNS TO
REQUIREMENTS
While simulation can be applied throughout the exploration and optimization phases of the design, it is often used more for
directional guidance rather than definitively answering how the product will perform. There is also the possibility that some
requirements may not have been tested at all if they are not in line with the performance characteristics targeted for improvement.

As you reach the end of development, spending time to run in-depth analyses that evaluate all design requirements is essential
to confirming that your product will perform to spec. This is where we veer from optimization and the search for the best possible
design, to simply ensuring it doesn’t have fatal design flaws that may have slipped by.

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 VALIDATING DESIGNS TO REQUIREMENTS
MULTI-PHYSICS
The goal of simulation should be to predict the response of
the product as it will be used in service. The typical use of
simulation, however, focuses on predicting the effects of a
single physical phenomenon, such as stress or fluid flow.
Most designs will experience combinations of these effects.
One example is how airflow within an electronics enclosure
will dissipate heat generated by the components on the PCB.
Products also will change shape when subjected to thermal
load, which will affect their structural performance.

In certain scenarios, the complexity of these interactions

makes it challenging to run many different iterations during
the exploration or optimization stages of the process. That is
not to say multi-physics should only be used for validation—
just that it should absolutely be used if not applied earlier in
the process and if applicable to the product.

Using the electronics example above, you may perform many

iterations combining CFD and thermal simulation to inform the
placement or sizing of fans required to cool the component
adequately while optimizing the design. Then in validation you
can perform in-depth analyses to evaluate the entire range of
use cases to ensure it will not fail.

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 VALIDATING DESIGNS TO REQUIREMENTS
FATIGUE AND DURABILITY
While the stress analysis used throughout the design
process is useful for evaluating the maximum stress,
strain, and deformations your parts will experience in
use, it does not help predict how well it will hold up over
time. Knowing the lifespan of your product also requires
that you understand the long-term damage caused by
thousands, or millions, of loading cycles, which can be
done with a fatigue analysis.

Like the multi-physics analyses presented earlier,

fatigue can be used early on, but is more generally
applied as a check used at the end of development
to ensure your product will not fail prematurely or to
roughly gage overall lifespan.

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 Summary
For every project where the goal is to achieve the best possible
outcome, the process of early exploration, product optimization,
and in-depth validation can help you go further than your
competitors who are focused only on quality, time-to-market,
and cost. With performance improvement as your objective,
simulation and generative design can be deployed throughout the
development process to help you conceive more complex ideas, get
the most out of every design decision, and ensure they do not fail
in use.

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