Holding around three decades of experience, Rafiq is also an Independent Director at DCB Bank.

The world has now realized that digital transformation is now a case of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ with businesses trying to pull through the COVID-19 phase and this shift towards digital that can no longer be avoided. The common characteristic of organisations that are coping with this pandemic is clearly their flexibility when it comes to the digital platform.

What the future needs is the embracing of agile methodologies that are pervasive when it comes to application. Trends like social, mobile, big data, analytics, cloud, and the internet of things have transformed businesses and everyday life. These trends are what drove the creation of the Industry 4.0 vision that has everything smart, networked and personalised. Industries and economies of the world, to a large extend, have incorporated this vision and is on their journey to power a wave of digital transformation.

Technologies that have been on the fringes of digital transformation until recent times are soon set to become drivers of the same. This includes Cobots to work in proximity with humans, Augmented Reality to support remote working and Exoskeleton to add physical capability. For those that were behind, COVID-19 was in many ways the wake-up call. Organizations lacking in digital capabilities would find it hard to battle the business crisis presented by COVID-19.

Engineering Simulation & COVID-19
Engineering simulation was able to show its worth during this COVID-19 phase. Even when the situation was at its peak, industries like the healthcare were able to develop safe and reliable Ventilators, Masks, Negative pressure rooms (NPR), sample collection booths and so on with the help of simulation. Engineering simulation was able to heavily reduce the time and cost required for the product design and development. Even in the post COVID19 phase, there is bound to be a growth in the utilization of simulation in the healthcare industry with customized simulation products and solutions.

post COVID-19
COVID-19 forced engineering companies to operate remotely and thereby there is a growing dependence on simulation versus physical testing. This trend has led to the increased use of Cloud and remote visualization and computing through VPN. Companies have realised both the challenges and benefits of working remotely. Post COVID-19, many engineering companies are likely to enhance their dependence on simulation and their readiness and infrastructure for working remotely. To support this trend, engineering simulation companies are likely to invest more in remote visualization, remote computing including Cloud, high performance computing, flexible licensing, AR/VR, IoT, a common simulation platform for collaboration across multiple departments and so on.

There are certain questions that arise when it comes to designing product development manufacturing testing and validation in the post COVID-19 world

We have been working on enhancing our Cloud solutions to enable users to work remotely from home. With the latest developments, users can now run the full interactive desktop applications on an end-to-end basis from pre-processing, solving to post-processing on our cloud using virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). This means that users can run their simulation applications remotely on a cloud virtual machine from the comfort of their homes. This provides access to all the hardware and software that you need, when you need it and you pay only for what you use. As you know, this is a huge advantage especially for small and medium businesses as they can acquire the computing power of a large enterprise at a cost that is within their budget.

Validation & Testing
Social distancing is a new reality due to COVID 19. This means that physical prototyping and testing is not only going to be expensive, but also more time consuming. We have always advocated the advantages of simulation when it comes to validation and testing. For example, the latest trends in the automotive industry are Electrification & Automated vehicles and engineering simulation is already playing a crucial role there. Traction motors for EVs are being developed using engineering simulation for a variety of aspects like electrical performance under diverse driving conditions, cooling, and operations in harsh environments among others. Simulation, however, can help you identify potential product failure early in the design process and enable you to optimize your products. It allows designers to road test in a risk-free virtual environment.

Automated Vehicles also have to run millions of miles virtually before they can hit the roads. This is practically impossible without using various engineering simulation tools to predict performance of radars, lidars, various other sensors, ECUs and others. Automakers can afford to test physical prototypes under only a few limited conditions, however, simulation can ensure product integrity across a broad spectrum of conditions for a fraction of the time and cost investment involved in physical testing. Simulation is always the best option when it comes to cost and time – social distancing or not.

Simulation is the Future
There will be a lot of pressure in the post COVID- phase for industries. This situation will exert more pressure on cost optimization and reduced time for any new product development. At the same time, the Industry would be expected to keep their future strategic product launches on a fast track mode in order to get the first entry advantage and to capture the market share. Therefore, the dependency on the simulation will continue to grow to ensure faster and reliable product development.
If you take the auto sector itself, we expect even more rigorous embracing of technology to make design easier and faster because, truth be told, we have lost a lot of time and if we need to get those vehicles and new designs into the market, we need simulation technology to be in the forefront. Also, the change in strategy to risk mitigate global supply chain i.e. not having over dependence on any one country/region will further accelerate technology usage. COVID-19 is something that we will face the brunt of for years to come and we have no choice but to rise to the occasion.

In this age of digital transformation, the Simulation software industry will see a strong growth both globally and in India. New technologies such as 5G, IIoT, Electrification and Autonomous driving require simulation to bring the product to the market faster. In fact, simulation is no longer a choice, but a necessity. The adoption of simulation will not only be by large industries, but also the small and medium businesses that have realized its potential.