40 - Newsletter EnginSoft Year 8 n°3
CAE Seminars in Japan, “CDAJ Numerical Analysis Academy” CD-adapco JAPAN Co.,LTD. (CDAJ) is one of the most successful CAE companies in Japan with its sophisticated engineering expertise and services. The company’s software portfolio comprises more than 20 different CAE tools. CDAJ’s diverse offer is underlined by numerous success stories and testimonials from satisfied customers and software users in the automotive, precision, energy, heavy and home appliances industries. In addition, modeFRONTIER, the state-of-the-art software for multi-objective and multi-disciplinary robust design optimization, adds further value and reputation to CDAJ’s expertise as a partner to industry, research and the academia. It was in 2001 when CDAJ started sales activities and support services which the management regarded, from the beginning, as indispensable to promote modeFRONTIER as the key solution for optimization on the Japanese market. In this context, CDAJ hosts unique CAE Training Courses named “CDAJ Numerical Analysis Academy”. Their primary objective is to support customers and modeFRONTIER Users to comprehend the latest CDAJ conducts regular modeFRONTIER application knowledge, from Seminars in Japan basic theory to hands-on usage. The CAE Courses are based on CDAJ’s many years of experiences and customer feedback. The Training Program comprises a wide range of courses targeted at all customers, from “numerical analysis” beginners to advanced users. In 2011, the CDAJ Numerical Analysis Academy offers 11 theoretical courses, 40 practical courses and 21 training courses. The theoretical courses are designed to teach the principles and knowledge of fluid dynamics, structural analysis, optimization, certification standards etc. Practical courses provide hands-on training, demonstrations, latest technical information and customer case studies for each software tool. The training courses include technical learning/transfer and lessons on systematic educational consulting. For optimization problems, one of CDAJ’s key expertise areas, there are 2 theoretical courses: the “optimization basic” seminar and the “multi-objective robust design optimization basic” seminar. These courses have gained an excellent reputation from attendees because of their straight forward explanations on the necessary knowledge for practical business. 2 practical seminars “Your first modeFRONTIER” seminar (*) and the “Mastering mode FRONTIER” seminar(*) are provided online. Naturally, this helps the students to learn easily whenever they have time available. The seminar duration is between 1,5 to 2 hours, the programs are divided into 10 to 20 minutes sessions. During the specified days, the participants can listen at any time, as many times as they want, wherever they like. Apart from the advantage to be able to avoid traveling, CDAJ’s online seminars also offer flexibility in terms of time, i.e. participants can listen for half an hour on each of the 3 days
after coming home from work. *These seminars will be modified or changed as of October 2011. Here is the interview which I had the pleasure to conduct with Ms. Kimiko Nakai, the marketing manager of CDAJ. Please can you tell us more about the usage of modeFRONTIER in Japan? The technology is used in many companies, especially within the automotive and electronics industries. We have noticed that the optimization technology has become quite common in the manufacturing industries in Japan. We see more and more companies not only executing the automation and optimization, but also using the post processing functionality of data mining, to reveal the relationship between each parameter and to utilize it for their R&D and design. When you define the agenda for a modeFRONTIER seminar which requires the coupling with other software tools, what points are you taking into account? There are two key points. The first one is to introduce practical coupling methods for each application to lower the threshold of optimization analysis focusing primarily on “usable for real scenarios”. The second point is to explain that much more information can be gained from the post processing functionality of data mining. Based on these 2 points, we create the seminars. Our primary goal always is that an effective optimization tool can be understood by a growing number of people. What kind of feedback do you get from the attendees? We received the following recent comments. “The content of the seminar is easy to understand because the difficult theory is kept to a minimum while the agenda focuses on the necessary knowledge used in real business.”, “Well balanced explanations for basic to advanced cases are provided.”, “I am very satisfied with the information which explains ”why optimization” and “what is optimization”.” Please tell us about your vision and future plans for the “CDAJ Numerical Analysis Academy” In the past 4 years since October 2007, all seminars have been continuously modified and improved following the progress of the CAE software and new themes of interest. We will do our very best to continuously refine our seminars, their contents and management, to deliver highest quality technical information to the modeFRONTIER Users in Japan. This article has been written in collaboration with CD-adapco JAPAN Co.,LTD. URL (Japanese): http://www.cdaj.co.jp/ Akiko Kondoh, Consultant for EnginSoft in Japan