In house vs Consultancy Advice 6

[SarahL]

The company I work for are planning to implement some FEA as part of our design / development process. We are now entering into the common discussion about whether we want to out-source everything, or to buy some software and train people in house to use it.

We aim to go all out and use some form of virtual testing as a predicitve tool for every project and can see the benefits of both options.

Does anyone have any advice or experience of having to make this decision?

We are new to this area of work, and only have a couple of people in house with some basic FEA knowledge at present.
Any advice much appreciated!

 

[MadMango]

Training someone to use FEA software is completely different than having someone with the experience to yield accurate results.

I would think in your present circumstance, an outside consultant would be the correct approach.

[green]"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."[/green]
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[feadude]

Outsourcing in my opinion is for occasional work such as failures and sometimes the result they give you is not correct because most outsourcers are not familiar with your design. If you train someone in house that already knows the product design and has the academic FEA background along with some FEA experience, it will be more reliable.

 

[crisb]

Another option is outsource until you have enough understanding of your analysis and software requirements to make an informed decision.

A lot will depend on your potential volume of analysis work, the complexity of your products, and the skill of your in house people. A good person can be many times as productive as a poor one, who may not get the right (or any) answer.

 

[TGS4]

If you decide to go the route of having the skill in-house, your management will need to understand that this is not a skill that can be used briefly and then left for 3 months, only to be picked up again quickly and competently. You will probably need a full-time person dedicated to the FEA. This is necessary for ongoing competence and consistency. I woudl recommend strongly against havign several people "trained" in FEA, only to use it 1 month out of the year.

In summary, unless you need someone full-time, then your best bet would be to outsource.

 

[CESSNA1]

SARAHL: I have seen both. I have done FEA and have reviewed "consultants" work. I recommend that you may want to consider both. You can learn FEA in a few hours, but,I have always said - "it can take you years to learn how to do fea." Fea is agreat tool, but it has its limitations and quirks, as does the software. The problem with hiring a consultant is that they may not know as much as you; or worse yet, may not understand what you want. Remember the consultant is in the fea business, not your business. They may have no idea what you really want from the analysis.

Learning fea gives you a leg up. It helps you understand its shortcomings and limitations of both the theory and the software. This can be an immense help if you contract out to "consultants". First it will help you explain what you want a prepare a good statment of work. Second it will help you determine if you received what you asked for, third it will help you to verify their results, and fourth, it will help you learn.

Get a consultant that has experience in what you want done. Do not forget to ask the consultant to verify their results.

Regards
Dave Hall

 

[GregLocock]

If it is a core competency for your business there is only one answer. Bear in mind that you'll need correlation data to validate your models, you may find outsourcing the acquisition of that data makes sense.

If you are trying to bootstrap your own FEA engineers without an experienced lead analyst then figure on two years and a lot of mistakes before you can trust the results. Big clue -the FEA you learn at uni is an order of magnitude less critical than real stuff.

I went to a very funny presentation to an FE conference recently where the new kid on the block at his racing team had done an FE on a component, produced the pretty pictures, and ignored the obvious. He seemed a bit stunned by the negative reaction of the audience. The primary function of FE is not producing pretty pictures, it is producing results so the designers can modify the designs.



Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[johnhors]

Greg

Can you divulge any more info on "I went to a very funny presentation to an FE conference recently" ? It seems to me that the "new kids on the block" can fly with the software but have no understanding of what lies under the bonnet, ask them to draw by free hand a sketch of the free body diagram of the component with ALL applied loads labelled, then ask is it in equilibrium??? My point is when presented with a choice of analysts, pick the one with most experience even if they are "a bit slow" in driving the software, you stand a better chance of getting the quality you require.

 

[paulliu]

Outsource for now and hire own FEA expert ASAP.

 

[ThomasH]

My "advice" is based on the assumption that what you know is your product. Use that knowledge and bring that to the "designteam". What you don't know is FEA, buy that knowledge, at least initially. Than you can teach the FEA-consultant what you want to know and he can teach you what FEA can do. Based on that you can decide if you need it in-house or should continue to use a consultant.

Keep in mind, buing software is the easy part. Using it to get reliable results, that's the hard part.

Greg mentioned that if it's "core competence" the answer is easy. As I understand it you don't have it today so in my opinion it can't be "core" right away. If that should be the case anyway, hire an expert. Don't consider inhouse training in that case because it takes time, especially if there is no competent teacher around. Then it's "trial and error" all the way and that's timeconsuming.

Good Luck

Thomas

 

[tensor1]

Johnhors made the following comment about the "new kids on the block":

"ask them to draw by free hand a sketch of the free body diagram of the component with ALL applied loads labelled, then ask is it in equilibrium?"

My question is what sofware aids are avaliable for FBD diagrams? I've googled the topic but only found educational type programs.

 

[gwolf]

Tensor1,

The most commonly used software for this application is a brain combined with an old but reliable set of hardware called a pencil and paper.

 

[johnhors]

Thank you gwolf for answering tensor1's question, I was hoping that someone else would back me up! I would have thought that the words "free hand sketch" had made my point pretty clear!

 

[gwolf]

SarahL,

Much good advice on this page, you are about to step into an expensive minefield. I think it would be wise in the first instance to hire an INDEPENDENT consultant to review your situation in person and then recomend a way forward. This could be 100% outsourcing, 100% in-house or more likely a hybrid which starts closer to outsourcing and ends close to in-house over 2 years.

 

[SWComposites]

SarahL,

- if you don't anticipate having enough FEA work for at least one full time person in-house, then just outsource the FE analysis. FE is not really something that can be done part time unless by someone with a lot of experience.

- if you anticipate enough FEA work and want to do some or all of it in-house, then you need to develop a training plan. This should include lots of practical FE classes - be very leary of university classes as they are too theoretical and don't deal much with practical issues; on the other hand, from what I have seen most Abaqus conducted classes are good (I don't have much knowledge of classes run by other vendors). Then your FEA person will need to learn to apply the generic FEA skills to your particular applications. This can be done by "trial-and-error" (lots of trials and lots of errors), or by the guidance on an experienced FEA person, either hired in-house or as a consultant.

- when you start talking to consultants: if they don't start by asking lots of questions about why you want to do FEA, what you expect to get from the FEA, what material properties you have for your structure/design, what tests you plan to run to correlate with the FEA, etc. but rather pitch some pretty FE pictures and make lots of claims about how they can solve all of your problems thru analysis, then show them the door and talk to someone else.

 

[ekline]

A few thoughts on some previous posts:

1) Pencils and paper can be abused.

2) There are engineers with many years of bad experience. I once presented a new joint design and compared the free-body diagrams for the new and old designs. A 30-year veteran gave it a thumbs down because he said it was exactly the same as the old design and he didn't like my analysis technique (FBD's, which showed that the designs were quite different).

3) If you have people with a solid grasp of mechanics and strength of materials, develop them as internal FEA users, since the software isn't too hard to learn. (Understanding of linear algebra and differential equations also helps in understanding the limitations of FEA.) FEA software won't magically give anyone an understanding of mechanics, and that goes for consultants as well as internal employees. If you hire a consultant, convince yourself they know the physics of the problem.

4) If you go with internal employees, offsite training may seem expensive (~$400/day), but it guarantees that the trainee can focus on learning the basics without being interrupted by other daily work in the office.

 

[rb1957]

"guarantees ... [not] being interrupted" ...
not in today's world (what with cell phones, pagers, blackberries, surgically-implanted electrodes ...)

 

[chris9]

I've worked for a company that tried to do all three. i.e outsource FEA , use an in-house FE Analyst and train design engineers to do FEA.

When anyone outsourced FEA without consulting the in-house analyst this was nearly always a disaster. Some of the design engineers didn't have the right background to do FEA. The few that did just had no time to spare.

So my advice would be to use an FE analyst who knows your product to do your analysis or to outsource your analysis.

 

[rb1957]

if you're still checking this post SarahL, the key question is ...
"is this required for this (one) job or is this a skill (dare i say a core competency) that is critical for your future plans?"

if it is one off, i'd suggest the FEA shop/consultants ... there are enough posts about the caution you'll need to successfully persue this course.

if it a critical need, then you'll need the skill in-house, either by growing a siutable designer/engineer or by hiring someone expressively for this, again enough posts above ...

you could combine the two if you were daring, if you intend to use a FE shop for long term, you may use a one off project to see how it works and then go for the long term "relationship".

a thought, its easier to change tack if you start with an FE shop and if you start with in-house staff.

good luck