Jason Ghidella, manager, Simulink Platform and Controls product marketing, Mathworks details on Model-Based Design | How do manufacturers create the right design to cost approach especially in a country like India, which is extremely price sensitive?
I would say that especially if you have to be cost sensitive, it is important to work efficiently. You need to be able to assess design alternatives in a cost-effective way, and in a timely manner, yet still add differentiating features that set your product apart from your competition. Manufacturers need their equipment to work faster, yet be more precise, while optimising energy consumption/ efficiency.
In the above context, tell us how a Model-Based Design can help enhance the process?
Model-Based Design (visually modelling your system and simulating it on the desktop with MATLAB and Simulink) helps to reduce double efforts, especially when you enhance your model with a modular structure to ensure reusability. However, using models and simulation not only helps you in cutting down time and costs but also increases innovation – new approaches/ideas can be simulated directly in the model instead of waiting to build costly physical prototypes in the lab. When the prototypes are available, you can validate that the best design you simulated performs as expected.
In many cases the next version of the product is an evolution from a current product. This typically means you have access to a lot of data from that product. Model-Based Design can also take advantage of all that data as we have powerful data analytics tools that let you optimise the (mechatronic) design of your machine or device (offline) or analyse production data in realtime (online).
In which manufacturing sectors can this design be used?
Our customers use Model-Based Design for different applications like:
• Design and parameterisation of tension control for the packaging and printing industry
• Development and automated testing of sophisticated state machines
• Design of closed-loop controllers in servo drives and inverters
• Analytics of big amounts of production data and many more.
What are the challenges/roadblocks that you face when it comes to convincing customers to use this design model?
Adopting Model-Based Design often requires a strong ROI. We have many customer references stating that once a team gets up to speed on the use of simulation as a design tool their development time for embedded software can be cut in half. Also, the number of mistakes in embedded software making their way into systems and equipment in the field is reduced. This can significantly increase company revenue due to being first to market and having a product with better quality and performance. It can also decrease company costs by reducing warranty expenses.
We have also collected best practices for adopting Model-Based Design and can help our customers use these practices to ensure a smooth transition to a new development process. For example, we have recommendations for how to choose the first project to use Model-Based Design for, how to adopt it in stages to minimise disruptions, and how to measure its effectiveness.
We also provide training so that customers can quickly come up to speed with the tools and start getting positive results in a short amount of time. In addition, we provide consulting services that can help the customers make the transition to Model-Based Design even smoother. Many new engineers graduating from college are already familiar with our tools, allowing them to start contributing quickly to their organisations.
What is the next step to further enhance the designing process?
Today, a good number of manufacturers have already established our tool in their development process. These companies are in most cases innovation leaders in their respective segments and gain additional benefit from modelling and simulation. The next step for us now is to help others in the industry to adopt it.