AUTOMOTIVE
SIMULATION IN THE 1980S
FORD
WHEN FORD MET WITNESS
John Ladbrook, Ford’s simulation technical
expert, has been responsible for overseeing
the implementation of the PTME simulation
strategy since the early 1980s. This role also
included sponsorship of many engineering
projects across various universities and
resulted in John’s appointment as Fellow with
Cranfield University in 2001 and Honorary
Professor at the University of East London in
2016.
The emergence of simulation back in the
eighties allowed engineers to influence
the planning process in a way that was
previously rarely considered. Simulation
models made transparent the effects of
change and investment and allowed a wide
variety of options to be tested cost effectively.
Experimentation and thorough investigation
of cause and effect led to a greater body of
evidence that could be presented to senior
management to justify decisions.
“Sharing and effective communication of the
simulation results was, and still is, absolutely
essential to establishing successful modelling,”
John argues.
This approach of using predictive simulation
models was so successful that Ford soon
mandated that investment in simulation
would be a pre-requisite for all future program
verification – and so the PTME invested further
in Lanner’s commercially available WITNESS
software to support model development and
satisfy Ford’s demand for predictive analysis.
This commitment to upfront analysis in
advance of any production or manufacturing
decisions led to regular meeting forums based
around the simulated results. Productivity
soared, but each major study project took
approximately 600 hours to complete –
effectively 4 months of full-time work.
This led to a situation where the demand for
simulation was far greater than the supply.
Ford needed new ways to break the deadlock
and John was tasked with solving this
problem without significantly increasing the
business headcount.
NEW CHALLENGES
As part of their program to continually
improve the efficiency of simulation and
reduce costs, Ford opted to develop its
own productivity-enhancing software,
known as the Ford Interactive Replacement
36
PECM Issue 42
Simulation Tool (FIRST). FIRST was built to not
only decrease the time required to answer
engineering questions, but also to enable
simulation capability at a more accessible
skill level. Key to the design was a simple
spreadsheet interface that an engineer,
without deep modelling and simulation skills,
could populate with data and then rapidly run
experiments which, in turn, fed back a set of
easy to understand results.
“Our FIRST system was used across all projects
for new and existing machine production
lines,” John recalls, “By this stage, Ford’s
simulation capabilities were widely recognised
as being world class and were seen as a
beacon for the industry. At this stage, only two
full time engineers were responsible for Ford’s
simulation strategy, supplemented by various
university located projects, making such
accolades all the more impressive!”
Sponsoring local universities created a
mutually beneficial relationship between
Ford, Academia and the students. This allowed
Ford to gain access to resources and expertise
while also providing students with real world
context to incorporate into their thesis and
experience in a world-class automotive
manufacturing engineering team. Since 2007,
Ford’s PTME simulation team has grown from
2 people to 13, five of whom had previously
been students working on projects at Ford.
This collaborative approach remains in
place today – enabling chosen students
to gain a greater knowledge of cause and
effect through the use and manipulation of
simulation and in some cases leading to long-
term employment within Ford.
FURTHER REFINEMENT
Ford’s development of simulation stepped
up a gear when, in 2007, an additional tool
was developed to allow for greater flexibility
and even easier access and learning for new
users. This model became known as the Ford
Assembly Simulation Tool (FAST). It refined the
lessons learned with FIRST and utilised more
of the open connectivity power of WITNESS
software. The result was a consolidated, more
flexible tool that could be used more widely
across powertrain assembly and engine
machining production lines. Management
were demanding an improved alignment to
reality and the improvement through FAST
meant this demand could now be met.
The simulation of each project study
with FAST was now taking under three
months to complete. This efficiency was
a great improvement and simulation was
consequently becoming more and more in
demand. In response, a greater number of
WITNESS nodes were deployed across the
Ford networks, allowing the team to answer
more questions with wider experimentation
that improved results.
Over the next few years, the development
of FAST continued; utilising HPC (High
Performance Computing) clusters in which
banks of powerful processors provided
John with the computing power he needed
to further increase experimentation rates
and team productivity. Before this could
be achieved, development of WITNESS and
the Ford infrastructure had to be made
and this was successfully achieved through
collaboration between Ford’s simulation team,