Top 5 Reasons to Outsource Your Modeling Work
Thanks to all of you who responded to my previous post on “How Much is Your Time Worth?” Not only are you keeping this blog alive, you are making it more popular by the minute! Thank you for that.
I recently became the exclusive USA distributor for EURO/CFD, a European based company that provides CAD and CAE (including CFD) simulation services. The main reason for this partnership being that my services are complimentary to EURO/CFD’s. I educate organizations on how to be more successful with computer modeling, and how to translate real-world engineering problems into computer simulations. Once specific areas and techniques are identified, and if a client wants a fast, clean, expert solution to their modeling problem, EURO/CFD will do a great job on that side. The services of MVP Modeling Solutions and EURO/CFD greatly compliment each other resulting in a happy client with a start-to-end solution to their complex engineering problem.
Since my previous post on saving time and headache with outsourcing, got such rave reviews, this week I am continuing that theme and in the spirit of my new partnership with EURO/CFD I present to you:
TOP 5 REASONS TO OUTSOURCE YOUR MODELING WORK
1) Save $10-200K+ in software license fees by paying someone with a software license already in place to run your simulation. Of course the counter argument is always “I might spend just as much or more paying someone else to run one problem, so why not just buy the software?” The answer to that is – if you clearly understand what you need to model as well as how and why you need to model it, your project will very likely cost less then a software purchase.
The trick is that the more specific is your modeling request for the consulting company, the less time consultants will spend figuring out how to set-up you simulations, equaling less money that you will have to pay them. You will also be saving significant in-house engineering time, which brings to reason #2.
2) Save months to years of engineering and management time and focus the in-house expertise on creating better, more innovative products, instead of figuring out how the software works, or even more time consuming, actually writing your own software.
Once you find a well respected, diverse engineering modeling firm, whose expertise lies solely in creating accurate, meaningful computational results – why not use their services whenever you need to model something? A lot of you agreed in the last post that in-house time can be very expensive. So if you’re spending 6 months of your own time finding the right software, negotiating with vendors, figuring out how the software works, and setting up your modeling problem, when consultants could have gotten accurate results to you in a week, you just robbed your company’s bottom line.
3) Your company mission does not revolve around “producing the best possible modeling results” but the modeling service company’s mission focuses on just that. You company’s mission might be to “be the leader in providing the best value in machines, engines and support services for customers,” as is the case with Caterpillar. Or to “exceed customer expectations by always being first to market with the best products,” as is the case with Cummins.
You simply will not spend as much time on engineering simulation as a company with a mission to solve customer problems with engineering modeling. They are the experts in that area and are much more likely to get the most accurate and relevant results out of computer simulations.
4) Save your job. I know you’re very smart. All engineers are. If only I had a dollar every time I heard “My company is actually really good…and I am an engineer so I am really good and smart…and there are a lot of smart people in my research group so we don’t need consulting. Did I mention that we are really smart here?”
I believe you. The problem nowadays is that a lot of really, really smart engineers have been desperately searching for jobs for over a year (see this post for more info). Professionals who find ways to help their organizations save money, cut costs and contribute to the bottom line in general, are the ones with a much better chance at job security then the ones that are just “really smart.”
So if you think that your job will be threatened if you figure out a way to outsource your CFD work, think again. If outsourcing will help you get results faster and cheaper – demonstrate that to the upper management and you would be in a much better position than a do-it-all-yourself engineer.
5) Create more contacts for the future. Here is a novel idea. Because there is no such thing as real job security anymore, you always need to be expanding your network of professional contacts. You never know when you might have to look for a job again and a solid list of professional contacts is a great place to start. If you are lucky enough to be working in one of the large corporate R&D groups, bringing in external consultants expands your list of professional contacts.
If an engineer who previously helped me land a contract with his company, called me and asked to help him look for a new job, I would turn my rolodex inside-out and contact everyone I know in order to help that person. Good consultants have very extensive professional networks and by being the key person to once bring that consultant into a company, you tap into their professional network.
DISCLAIMER: If these 5 Reasons seem self-serving and self-promotional, it’s because they are. But they are also very true. If you would like to discuss the possibility of outsourcing your CFD/CAD/CAE work call 1-800-931-9907.
Tags: CAD, CAE, CFD, computer modeling, computer simulation, engineering modeling, EURO/CFD, job search, job security, networking, Outsourcing
Well said. I had never really though of the license fee issue in that way. Most recently I have been pondering the impact of powerful and “free” tools on the industry. Even if you take the licensing costs out of the equation, however, you are still left with an expertise and experience gap.
Masha,
Good post and congrats on teaming up with EURO/CFD. I spent most of my CFD time promoting the use of CFD at the most basic level by non-CFD experts. I would routinely tell managers something like, “look, if you want to simulate incompressible airflow, driven by a fan through a room, there are simple CFD tools that will enable a regular Engineer to be successful. If you want to do multiphase oil droplets flying through the air that might need to ignite… outsourcing would be a better option for the few times THAT is critical.”
So, companies need to use the right tools for the right jobs… and weigh the costs of internal expertise and software against how often that type of analysis will be required.
I think most companies should consider a mix of both when it comes to CAE. And really, is that so uncommon in business? Perhaps you have your own fleet of delivery trucks setup for handling your standard product which comes in a 1′x1′ box. If you get a 1 time mega contract for a product that fits in a 200′x200′ box, would you spend the time investigating the purchase of a gigantic delivery truck? Or would you contact a delivery service specializing in that sort of thing?
Hello Masha,
Good post and its really a very practical and fesible to consider outsouceing as an option that keeps you away from so many hassels of Design and engineering which you mention in your post.
Regards
Ajay Singh Goutam
http://www.defiancetechnologies.com
I agree with your outsourcing comments but outsourcing for people is only as good as their ability to find the necessary outsourcing resources that have a focus on the services that they require. CFD modeling is used for many different industries and purposes. Some companies will offer themselves as experts on everything CFD just to keep busy when they really are a generalist in everything CFD. The company I work for only offers CFD modeling for analyzing people’s Data Centers. We don’t offer this service for any other purpose. Our focus gives us the edge on other companies who play part time in the Data Center space.
Fantastic! It is an eyeopener for me. When I read Succeful Unemployment, I was surprised. It seems to me that you are talking to me. I appreciate your writing skills and the way of thinking.
Kashif
Mechanical Design Engineer
Dear Peter,
Thank you for your comment. Focusing on a certain area of research certainly gives you and edge over companies trying to be all things to all people!
Best,
Masha
Dear Kashif and Ajay,
Thank you for the compliments. As long as professionals like you are finding value in what I have to say, I will keep on writing!
Thank you for keeping the posts going.
All the very best,
Masha
Interesting post. I think everyone there days is “Expert” in “CFD”. I put the cfd in comments because it is people are knowingly or otherwise just throwing it around for problems that are even marginally related. In any case I agree with the post in the broader sense that outsourcing should be done and considered as an alternative…especially for companies that do not require the need to have CFD software on permanent basis and may cut additional costs on software acquisition and license maintennce etc…
But the long run outlook seems still fluid, as to which is better. Years ago, when computng power was a big issue, few companies could afford to run big CFD cases on “super computers”. Now, everyone has “super computer”. It is even threatening the parallel computing world that laptops coming out with multi core processors. If vendors perfect how to make their application run efficiently on these mini - multi processors, I think software costs could be less of an issue and eventually it would come down to other factors in deciding which way to go. But I prefer outsourcing to someone who does it on full time basis and expert in it than some expert engineer in the comppany.
One of the biggest issue with using outsourcing is that to some extend you have an arms length relationship. One of the advantages of inhouse development is that you can work more collaboratively - but with consultants you will generally have to scope the work carefully and it is generally more challenging to change it along the way. Some of the smarter companies around may import the expertiese or second the experience into a project team.
In a lot of the work that I have been involved with, the clients (some internal and external) get most out of “the journey” in terms of the model development and validation. In some ways the value of the in house developments is not well recognised due to the intangible benefits of the work, improved knowledge capture, in house knowledge etc.
Ultimately it will become a business decision - also from my experience people performing CFD need to be doing it full time to ensure that they can more efficiently use it as a tool, it probably takes at least a year to become proficient for a person with the right skillset.
Hello Masha,
Good Post,Approach is realistic and I appreciate you writing skills and way of expressing the thoughts.
Outsourcing is the only way to run a company if you work from home.Argue all you want about where you get your people from (US or India) but the fact is, just about everyone needs the help.