CAE tools have nowadays become a common industry standard to rapidly give companies the strategic elements, as well as to completely quantify the uncertainties/tolerances of the actual and simulated processes, in order to reduce waste and to conform to production quality standards (six sigma, among others).

New CAE software tools are continuosly being developed to progressively abandon the old “trial and error” method, which is slow and wasteful, in favor of an integrated, optimized process where all the design parameters are quantified and can interact with one another. Some notable examples of an integrated approach to CAE in the consumer goods industry are here reported.

In the field of household appliances, structural, thermal, fluid dynamics and acoustic analyses provide the possibility to improve performance, achieve packaging and product efficiency, and enable data-driven decision making during the design phase. The test phase, as a result, is only used on the actual prototype for a final inspection.

In sporting equipment production, the use of CAE is fundamental in order to simulate the behaviour of the sporting apparatus under extreme conditions, to test new materials as well as alternative shapes/modifications aimed at improving product performance before prototype production.

In the electronics field (pc, tablet, telephony), crash, thermal and electromagnetic analyses are performed using the finite element method (FEM), in order to improve the quality and duration of the produced items.

In the food industry, integrating Computer Based Engineering into production flow, not only for production machinery design, but also for packaging, conservation and fine-tuning of the production process itself, can provide a lasting competitive advantage to the manufacturer.