Sintavia, a global leader in independent metal additive manufacturing, faced the challenge of proving the ability to additively manufacture optimized aerospace replacement parts. The goal was to exceed the existing part’s mechanical and operational properties while decreasing the overall weight. The company aimed to produce optimized designs of aerospace brackets that meet or exceed the existing bracket’s mechanical properties while reducing the overall weight of the parts. The component selected for this challenge was an aftermarket aviation part for a low pressure turbine, used 12 times on each engine.

The 1001VELAcup is a competition where student teams from various universities design and build their own boats to compete in regattas. The boats must adhere to specific class rules, including size restrictions and the use of sustainable materials. The PoliTo Sailing Team from the Politecnico di Torino was one of the competing teams. Their challenge was to design a boat made with 70% sustainable material, within the given size restrictions, and using Altair‘s HyperWorks suite of computer aided engineering (CAE) tools. The team aimed to improve on their previous year's performance, where they achieved an eighth and third position in the regatta. The project focused on the design and construction of a skiff, a specific type of sailboat, within the given regatta regulation. The particular challenge was that the teams had to use a specific class of materials such as recyclable and natural materials, i.e. flax fiber, basalt fiber or wood. To develop a light and stiff boat structure with the given materials, the team had to use sophisticated modeling and simulation tools to find the ideal structural shape and material layout.

Ingeniacity S.L., a Spanish engineering service provider, was tasked by Juan Yacht Design to optimize the structural design of a new Swan 50 class yacht, with a particular focus on designing a new bowsprit made of composite material. The challenge was to create a structure that offered the highest possible stiffness while also being as light as possible. The bowsprit, a spar that attaches the forestay forward to the hull, is a critical part of the yacht's structure. The design and optimization of the bowsprit presented unique challenges due to the need to take into account the characteristics of the composite material to leverage its lightweight and stiffness potential. The engineers also had to consider buckling modes due to the thin walls of the bowsprit, which were necessary to keep the weight low. This required the use of sophisticated computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools and optimization technologies that could handle all necessary disciplines efficiently and deliver accurate results promptly.

Auburn University's Formula SAE team, with a history of designing and building formula-style racing cars, faced a significant challenge in optimizing their racecar design while adhering to constraints related to mass and SAE racecar specifications. The team aimed to improve the car's performance by focusing on components that promised mass reduction with equal or increased stiffness. The monocoque chassis was one such area of focus. The team aimed to reduce the mass while increasing the monocoque suspension stiffness to enhance the racecar's handling. However, achieving this design objective was not straightforward. The student team members had to consider concurrent development design goals and meet demanding build deadlines.

Mabe, a Mexico-based company that designs, produces, and distributes appliances globally, was facing a significant challenge in its product development process. The company conducts various analysis studies on its products, including refrigerators, washing machines, and dryers, to improve their performance and quality. A critical part of these studies is the Refrigerator Door Foam Modeling (RDFM) process, which involves modeling the foam within the refrigerator that helps maintain the internal temperature and absorb shock during a drop situation. However, due to the complexity and time-consuming nature of this process, it was often overlooked or skipped entirely. This led to two major issues: the computer-aided engineering (CAE) results were not matching the actual results 100%, and the energy usage was not being measured appropriately. Mabe wanted to perform RDFM more routinely but needed a more efficient way forward.

Wagon Automotive, a Germany-based system and module supplier of components to major car builders, was facing the challenge of accelerating product development and reducing prototyping costs while maintaining high quality. The company operates in a demanding, time-sensitive market, supplying components to an impressive list of customers that includes VW, Audi, GM, Toyota, Mercedes, Honda, Volvo, Ford, Jaguar, and Porsche. With development and production sites in Europe, Asia, and North America, 7,600 Wagon Automotive employees are engaged in the design, testing, and manufacture of components that must meet precise production deadlines. The rapidly changing nature of the global industry demands ever-shorter product development cycles from Wagon Automotive engineers. To sustain its strong competitive position and keep its customers satisfied, Wagon Automotive was seeking ways to speed up product development and reduce the growing costs of prototyping.

Sea Ray Boats, a leading U.S.-based manufacturer of high-end pleasure boats, is constantly challenged by the need for innovation and change in the luxury boat market. The company introduces eight to 12 new or refreshed designs every year, with the engineering team working on six or seven designs at any given time. The primary challenge in designing boats is creating usable space, which is always in short supply. Much of the design effort focuses on configurable space that can change function to fill more than one need. The design cycle varies with the boat, typically averaging eight to 18 months depending on the size and type of the boat. The engineering team at Sea Ray uses Altair HyperWorks CAE tools exclusively for the entire analysis process of the vessel, from modeling and simulation, to visualization and reporting.

The Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées Genopole, a research program established in 1999 in southern France, was facing a significant challenge. The program, which is part of the National Genopole Network, was dealing with an increasing number of complete genome sequences that required more processors and intensive utilization. The initial compute platform for bioinformatics at the Toulouse Genopole was a four-processor Dell server, later supplemented by a four-CPU IBM system. However, these resources were insufficient for the ambitious bioinformatics program and the researchers developing bioinformatics tools in three Genopole-connected laboratories. The demand for computational resources was steadily increasing, and the existing infrastructure was unable to keep up.

Zyvex Corporation, a leading molecular nanotechnology development company, was faced with the challenge of developing micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology that could enable new nanotech applications. The majority of commercially available MEMS devices were essentially two-dimensional, grown onto or etched from a flat substrate. However, Zyvex saw the potential for MEMS technology that provided structures and devices with 3D characteristics. The challenge lay in the manufacturing process. Building a 3D MEMS device required some form of assembly to raise structures from the plane of fabrication and move them into the appropriate position. Conventional assembly methods were costly and alternative methods had limitations. Furthermore, the use of computational analysis was critical to the design of microstructures, as a microfabrication cycle could take up to four months.

Hitachi Truck Manufacturing was faced with the challenge of reducing material costs for their large mining trucks while adhering to standard specifications. The trucks, designed and built at their Guelph, Ontario plant, are massive rigid-body vehicles used for surface mining in various parts of the world. These trucks can be up to 30 feet wide and carry a payload of 316 tons. Given their size, they must be shipped in sections and assembled on site. The design engineers at Hitachi Truck Manufacturing (HTM) were tasked with reducing materials costs, meeting ISO specifications, and maintaining payload performance. The main challenge was predicting the behavior of the truck's structure, particularly the welded steel cab structure, to ensure it met ISO 3471 ROPS (rollover protection system) and FOPS (falling object protection system) specifications.

The H2politO team, a group of students from the Politecnico di Torino, participated in the Shell Eco-marathon (SEM), a competition that challenges student teams to design, build, and drive the most energy-efficient car. The team competed in the “Prototype” category with a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, and in the “Urban Concept” category with a hybrid vehicle. The main challenge for the team was to reduce frictions and masses to minimize fuel consumption. One of the most critical issues was the wheel rim design. Lighter rims lead to less rotating masses, reducing energy consumption and improving the dynamic behavior of the vehicle. The geometry of this specific component had to be optimized: the ideal structure and mass distribution had to be determined, while also taking manufacturing constraints into account. For these development tasks, the H2politO team had to apply sophisticated computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools which would support a simulation driven design process and enable early decision making by proposing possible design directions for further improvements of the vehicles.

The Shell Eco-marathon (SEM) is a global competition that challenges student teams to design, build, and drive the most energy-efficient car. The team H2politO, a group of students from the Politecnico di Torino, participated in the competition with a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle and a hybrid vehicle. The team aimed to improve their vehicles by reducing frictions and masses to minimize fuel consumption. One of the most critical issues was the wheel rim design. Lighter rims lead to less rotating masses, reducing energy consumption and improving the vehicle's dynamic behavior. The challenge was to optimize the geometry of the wheel rims to determine the ideal structure and mass distribution while considering manufacturing constraints. The team needed to apply sophisticated computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools to support a simulation-driven design process and enable early decision making for further improvements of the vehicles.

The Pan Asia Automotive Technology Center (PATAC), a joint venture between General Motors and SAIC Motor, was facing challenges in managing its computer-aided engineering (CAE) simulation technology. As PATAC's analytical technology improved, the volume of its CAE analysis tasks increased, and the subject and application fields expanded. Engineers needed a system to store, reuse, and share models, and synchronize iterative design schemes in different simulation fields for collaboration. Additionally, PATAC was promoting the digital transformation of its research and development system. The company needed a simulation management platform to manage daily analysis work, structure CAE data systematically, improve visualization of results and processes, and track analysis cases more easily.

Kyoto University, one of the largest and highest-ranked universities in Japan, has a mission to provide high-performance computing (HPC) tools for researchers all over the country. With over 200 teams and more than 1,600 users relying on its computing resources, the university supports research in a broad variety of areas including natural science, economics, space science, genetics, and civil engineering. However, the massive data growth and demand for computing power meant that HPC is always evolving, and Kyoto University’s Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies (ACCMS) needed to evolve with it. To elevate its HPC capabilities, the team commissioned Cray, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, to deliver three supercomputing systems. The workload management of these systems was orchestrated by Altair’s PBS Professional™, a part of the Altair PBS Works™ suite.

IBERIABANK, a financial institution with a growing footprint across the southeast U.S., was facing a significant challenge with its general ledger account reconciliation process. The bank, which manages approximately 20 billion dollars in assets, had to reconcile millions of rows in the general ledger, a process that was laborious and time-consuming. Some accounts were reconciled monthly, others daily, but regardless of the frequency, the process was a drain on resources. As the bank continued to grow, the need for an automated reconciliation process became increasingly clear. The bank's Controller, Denny Pagnelli, highlighted the issue, noting the 19 gigabytes of data that needed to be reconciled.

Southeastern Med, a community hospital serving over 4,000 inpatients and 100,000 outpatients annually in the Cambridge, Ohio area, was facing a significant challenge. The hospital's existing healthcare-specific business intelligence solution was unable to provide the level of reporting capabilities required to extract actionable insights from a wide variety of data sources. As the demand for more information and new types of reports increased, the IT department found it increasingly difficult to keep up. The hospital needed a platform that could integrate real-time information with static historical data from diverse sources. Additionally, they needed a way to make their vast data stores more meaningful and actionable, as their current reporting was not aiding in the discovery of insights needed to seize opportunities and mitigate risks promptly.

The United States Naval Academy (USNA) faced a significant challenge in organizing travel for over 3,000 midshipmen to global locations. The process, which involved acquiring and documenting travel arrangements and managing multiple itinerary and entitlement changes, was complex, dynamic, and high-risk for human error. The manual business processes and systems in place were inefficient, leading to delays, processing errors, cost overruns, and financial hardship for the travelers. The financial and logistical systems often failed to generate crucial travel information promptly. The USNA needed a solution that could handle structured data and information produced by multiple, disparate systems, as well as unstructured data present in forms, documents, and artifacts.

Hungerford Vinton, an external audit firm, was facing a common challenge in the auditing industry. The data they received from clients was difficult to work with, existed in a myriad of formats, and was generated by various types of accounting and financial packages. This resulted in more time, often unbillable, spent on extracting and analyzing the data needed for the actual audit. The firm also had to access and extract data from historical records and legacy systems, which are prevalent in government systems, a specialty of this firm. Additionally, they had to combine data from multiple companies for a single audit. Each client audit was unique, making audit data preparation a nearly insurmountable challenge. The firm wanted to significantly reduce the hours spent on data gathering and conversion, which could sometimes be as much as 15 hours per audit, some of which could not be billed back to the clients.

IVECO Australia, a manufacturer and distributor of commercial vehicles, faced a challenge in reducing the size, weight, and solving time in Finite Element Analysis (FEA) while improving the durability of components. The company had to conduct physical durability testing, which often led to redesigning components that failed during the test. This unnecessary design loop extended the target release date and increased the idle time of trucks during repairs. The company sought to validate components through FEA to eliminate this design loop during physical durability testing. The challenge was to predict the durability and test pass rate of components before creating a prototype, while also meeting strict cost and weight targets. The battery box, mounted on the truck chassis, was particularly susceptible to mechanical vibration, which could cause structural damage and hamper battery life.

The Marbridge Foundation, a nonprofit community serving developmentally disabled adults, faced a significant challenge due to new IRS regulations mandated by the Affordable Care Act. These regulations required the Foundation to provide detailed reporting on current and past payroll data. However, the Foundation's existing systems were not equipped to provide the necessary information, and the data output was only available in PDF format. The Foundation needed to analyze hours worked for over 300 employees to determine eligibility, calculate the employee share for each person offered coverage, and more. Hiring a temp agency to manually input the necessary payroll data was not a viable option due to cost constraints and the risk of errors, which could lead to substantial IRS penalties.

Cyclone Racing, Iowa State University’s Formula SAE team, was faced with the challenge of reducing the weight of their latest vehicle, CR22, specifically the vehicle's rear aerodynamic wing. The previous year's car had a heavy internal wing structure that led to excessive roll and instability during races. The team aimed to design a lightweight yet extremely stiff modified swan neck wing mount for the Formula SAE vehicle. The challenge was to ensure that the new design would not only reduce the weight of the entire wing package but also ensure that it was very strong and stiff to withstand the rigors of racing.

CNAF (Caisse Nationale d’Allocations Familiales), a large public sector agency in France, was facing a significant challenge in handling its family benefit data. The data was only available in various text formats and lists, making the extraction of insights extremely labor-intensive. The fund allocation and distribution process was managed by CNAF’s Department of Workflows and Document Management, led by Jean-Michel Omont, Archive System Manager. Until 2006, the organization had always dealt with its massive amounts of family benefit data manually. The information had never been consolidated and extracting any insights from it was extremely labor-intensive. As reports became accessible from computers in text formats, the system improved somewhat, but users were still unable to access the reports in Excel directly. In 2008, CNAF wanted to better understand their local IT needs and how they could expedite their data processing since they were handling thousands of files every day.

MasterCard, a global technology company in the payments industry, was facing a significant challenge in its business financial support team. The team of 13 was spending between 40 to 80 hours per week manually reconciling transactions and cash from reports that resided on the company’s mainframe. This process involved printing 20-30 individual, multi-page reports daily and hand-keying data into Excel for reconciliation. The task was not only time-consuming but also inefficient, especially considering the company's rapid growth and expanding product offerings. Derek Madison, Leader of Business Financial Support at MasterCard, was tasked with identifying new ways to increase efficiency and improve MasterCard processes.

Icicle Seafoods, one of the largest and most diversified seafood companies in North America, was facing a significant challenge with their legacy accounting system. The in-house, DOS-based system was unable to provide access to data in a useful, dynamic format without extensive manual effort. The company was spending too much time manually translating sales, inventory, accounting, and general ledger data into a useful, dynamic format. Information was locked in PDFs and other inaccessible file types, making it difficult for the company to use their data for creating simple schedules and financial statements. More complex functions, such as analysis and forecasting, were well beyond their reach. This inefficiency presented a real problem for a company whose success depends on getting products from fisheries to market as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Berkshire Bank's Human Resources (HR) department was faced with the challenge of creating and sharing monthly reports for short-term incentive plans, compensation and salary, talent management, and internal/external auditing requests. The department, which manages over 1,300 employees, had to spend hours collecting, parsing, and reconciling data before it could be shared with the executive team. The bank's expansion over the years, through organic growth and acquisitions, led to the deployment of several disparate HR systems. This resulted in HR data being 'locked away' in various systems, making it increasingly difficult to access, reconcile, and combine information from multiple vendors and various Excel spreadsheets.

The Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT) in Pune, India, was faced with the challenge of designing, fabricating, and testing a Quad-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that uses topology optimization to decrease weight and increase strength. The project was undertaken by a group of undergraduate students under the guidance of faculty members. The objective was to leverage the design freedom provided by the unmanned nature of the vehicle to amplify the vehicle's performance. The team aimed to find a simple and fast solution to finding the structural improvements needed to enhance the quad-rotor UAV. The challenge also involved dealing with the complexity of designs generated by topology optimization when no manufacturing constraints are added.

Earthlite, a leading massage and spa equipment manufacturer, faced significant challenges in managing its accounts receivable and accounts payable reporting processes. With a diverse and distributed customer base, the company needed an efficient and accurate method to manage these processes. The existing method involved the accounts receivable team manually downloading and analyzing 500-page PDF reports to identify accounts where collections were needed. The static report structure prevented Earthlite from being able to sort and organize the information or perform any sort of data analysis. This process was not only time-consuming and resource-intensive, taking each team member approximately six hours every month, but it was also prone to errors and potential delays in the collections process.

The University of Texas – Arlington's Formula SAE racecar team faced a significant challenge in redesigning the pedal box assembly of their 2019 racecar. The previous pedal box assembly, made of a carbon fiber and foam core body with aluminum pedals and mountings, had issues with body flexing and required reinforcement, which unfortunately increased the weight beyond the original design. The team also found the design and simulation process to be time-consuming. The challenge was to make the pedal box assembly stiffer, lighter, and easier to manufacture, while also reducing the time spent on design and simulation.

Arbor Financial Credit Union, a financial institution with over $465 million in assets and more than 37,000 members, was grappling with the challenge of reconciliation reporting within their accounting department. The data they needed to reconcile came from various sources, including PDF and text files, and they required a tool that could extract and blend this information for reporting purposes. The strategic implication that led Arbor Financial to reassess their situation was the need for efficiency and quality time savings. They were in dire need of a solution that could pull thousands of reconciliation reports daily without error, a task that was nearly impossible with their existing system.

Whitnell & Co., a wealth management organization, faced a significant challenge in generating 415 monthly reports detailing its clients’ purchases of security shares and investments. The process involved reconciling individual lots from Whitnell’s accounting system records to their multiple financial custodians. With over 1,200 accounts at one custodian alone and more than 46,000 records in the final table built from 20 separate tab delimited text source files, the data management task was immense. The process was not only time-consuming, taking approximately two hours to import all the source files into Excel and format the columns identically, but it was also prone to manual errors. Additionally, the company struggled with direct comparison of accounts in their portfolio system to identify anomalies. The manual process was so laborious that it took several months to get through just a quarter of the data, rendering the data stale and the efforts futile.