Value Proposition Development of Early Stage Computational Fluid

Concurrent engineering initiatives and the closely related principle of front-loading development processes identifying and solving problems early rather than waiting for traditional development and test processes to uncover them have been shown to be highly effective in improving product development performance. This often means shifting to new experimentation technologies that can be used much earlier in the development process than traditional technologies, delivering performance assessments much faster. Thus problems within new design ideas are exposed much sooner, allowing for cost-effective problem solving techniques without having to rewind significant parts of the development process. Front-loading accelerates innovation by permitting new ideas to be tested and refined faster than traditional techniques, allowing them to be incorporated into products without the risks often associated with the use of unproven ideas. Traditional methods might still be needed for fine-tuning a design, but new rapidfeedback technologies have demonstrated their value when used within their limitations. Front-loading has gained acceptance in many vehicle product development organizations, but one field in which it has not yet been introduced for early-stage design assessments and problem solving is air flow analysis. The earliest stages of design for a new vehicle focus largely on the shape and character of the vehicle's surfaces, which in turn have a significant influence on many aspects of the vehicle's performance. Thus the introduction of new experimentation technologies like Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) requires a great deal more consideration due to their impact on these critical early stages of product development, but the value of these methods and changes can be demonstrated. The resulting changes required in the development organization to support these methods including preservation of important creative processes and a pragmatic view of the complexities of process change are found to be complex but approachable given suitable motivation, realistic mindset and a holistic view. Thesis Supervisor: Michael Davies Title: Senior Lecturer, Sloan School of Management Thesis Supervisor: Stefan Thomke Title: William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School [This page intentionally left blank.] Acknowledgements I would like to thank the System Design and Management program and its staff, without whom this thesis and my enjoyable experience with MIT would not have been possible. I would also like to acknowledge my friends and colleagues at Exa Corporation for their flexibility and support over the last two years. I am now well into my thirteenth year at Exa, and while a lot has changed in that time, the willingness to confront and solve challenging problems has not. I would especially like to thank Steve Remondi for his guidance while working on this thesis, and Ales Alajbegovic, Alain Belanger, Fr6deric Gille, Mike Haffey, Philippe Moron, Franck Perot, and Bob Powell for their contributions and assistance in collecting information. Thanks also to Jamie Hoch for his flexibility over the two years that I've been in SDM. Thanks go to my thesis advisors Michael Davies and Stefan Thomke for their guidance and advice. Without it this thesis would have been a much larger task, which of course means it would have been much narrower in scope. Finally, my deepest thanks go to my family and friends who have supported me over the last two years. In that time I've gotten engaged and married, supervised the preparation of five software releases, taken classes, and researched and written this thesis. It has been a very busy time, but also an enjoyable one, and for that the patience and encouragement of my wife Monica have been irreplaceable. I look forward to spending more time with my family and friends! [This page intentionally left blank.]