Catching Design Flaws Before They Catch You: FEA Simulation as Smart Risk Management

One of the biggest wins in design is preventing failure before it ever happens. You may have been there yourself: working diligently on a design for weeks, deadlines approaching, and despite all of your effort, it just doesn’t feel ready. Then you find it—that one critical detail that, if left alone, would have led to headaches, costly delays, and budget overruns. Catching details like this early is not just a win; it's essential.

After 25 years in product development, I've seen how early, disciplined use of FEA simulation (Finite Element Analysis) is the key to managing project health and the core of smart risk mitigation.

Simulation Is Smart Risk Management

Confidence in Tooling

Releasing a new design for mass production tooling can feel daunting. With one file transfer, you're often kicking off an investment of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. Simulation can significantly increase your confidence that your design is ready to go. This essential design validation ensures you're investing in success, not a costly failure.

Intelligent Optimization

FEA can reveal high-stress areas ahead of time, allowing wall thickness to be added intelligently. A strategically placed rib to reduce loading in a sidewall is far more effective, lighter, and cheaper than just doubling the wall thickness across the entire part. This targeted optimization saves material and manufacturing costs.

React Quickly with Existing Protocols

Having an existing, comprehensive set of simulations for a new device allows you to quickly react to new, unexpected issues. If parts are used in a way that wasn't clear until after release, your existing simulation protocol can be quickly altered to match the new conditions, allowing the most effective design change to be executed immediately. This level of simulation readiness is invaluable for post-launch support.

The High Cost of Cutting Corners

We recently helped a client out of a huge mess. They had taken significant shortcuts by using low-fidelity analysis tools in the hands of an inexperienced engineer. They thought they were saving time and money, but by cutting corners when simulating heavily loaded injection molded parts, the decision cost them heavily in the end. By the time Design Department was engaged, they had not only scrapped six injection mold tools but nearly $200k in parts that were so severely under-designed they were useless. By using the right simulation tools, in the hands of our experienced engineers, we were able to redesign their system and get production back up and running in weeks. You can do this type of critical work ahead of time, or you can pay the cost later.

If you don’t see the problems ahead of time, they will certainly come and see you later.

Ready to Achieve True Design Readiness?

Stop inviting problems into your development cycle. Let our experienced engineers provide the design validation and risk mitigation you need.

Contact Design Department today to integrate smart FEA simulation into your next project.