8 years ago we hosted the first Simulation Leadership Forum
Marcus Oledal & Fredrika Dahlberg
Written by Marcus Oledal & Fredrika Dahlberg
Time flies…it’s now 8 years since Spring 2013, when we hosted the first Simulation Leadership Forum. Well at that time it was called something different (Simulation Integration Management), but the message was the same: Simulation success is so much more than Technology alone.
One of the key concepts that has evolved from the many presentations and discussions we’ve had during over the years is the Simulation Maturity Assessment. This is an easy-to-use web app with real time feedback, which helps our customers understand how they can realize more business value from simulation. An essential part of this framework is the Simulation Maturity Index which is built on Five Domains:
IMAGE: Simulation Maturity Index built on Five Domains
Last Simulation Leadership Forum – December 2021
During the final Simulation Leadership Forum of 2021 we summarized what we have learned throughout all the combined seasons and provided relevant evidence from guest presentations with examples of best practice and shared experiences on how to improve maturity within each of these domains.
Cummins and Grundfos simulation strategies
Examples from companies with upfront simulation strategies were given by, for example, Cummins and Grundfos, who shared both best practice and pitfalls. Simulation readiness seems to be a common strategy to overcome the classical Simulation vs Lab test dilemma. For a startup company like Carnot, there were no historical restrictions, and their approach was to implement a well-defined simulation process from the outset.
TetraPak handle the organization team
On the topic of organization, we had several guests covering different aspects of how to initiate an organizational model (Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery) or leadership (TetraPak, Cummins, Valmet). When surveying the audience, we realized that in most Nordic companies, simulation initiatives are driven from a simulation team leader level, or even by individual engineers.
Expert knowledge – the people
Capability is a complex topic to explore, but the democratization initiatives at Novo Nordisk and Oticon are both excellent examples of how you can turn expert knowledge into an automated process and subsequently roll out to a broader non-expert audience. Scania had a similar approach.
Capabilities domain
If we agree that sustainability efforts make up part of the capabilities domain then it’s true to say that there are concerns. When we surveyed the audience, environmental footprint came out as the least important business driver for simulation. We are of the opinion that this belief couldn’t be further from the truth and recommend ambitious simulation flag carriers align with the company’s overall environmental targets. Currently, this is one of the top priorities within almost all manufacturing and energy companies and where simulation is a proven game changer.
Photo: Marcus Oledal, Ph.D. Head of Business Innovation EDRMedeso
New technology
Volvo cars then told us how the speed of change has forced them to think very differently in terms of competence development, and how collaboration with universities has changed considerably during the last few years. This synced perfectly with the eco-system thinking that is prevalent within the Hydropower industry, as presented by NTNU.
These are some of the “intangible domain” examples of wisdom that our guests have kindly shared over the last couple of years. But, of course, we covered tech talk as well, such as Professor Matts Karlsson from Linköping University sharing how uses simulation expertise to push the boundaries every single year; it goes without saying that all participants conveyed useful tech insights as well!
Time to summarize the 2021 Simulation Leadership Forum season!
We have had some amazing guests sharing experiences from many countries and many industries, but as a participant in 2019 concluded:
It’s amazing how similar simulation challenges are across industry!
The adoption of simulation as a tool to reach strategic goals is still on the low side, but momentum is gathering pace! Therefore, we’re looking forward to meeting you all in May 2022, when the Simulation Leadership Summit returns to Copenhagen after an unplanned three-year break, thanks to you know what……
Until then you can catch up with all our sessions from 2020 and 2021.
Take care!
