P&G: Democratization of CAE and Spreadsheet Models

COMPANY NAME

Proctor & Gamble

INDUSTRY

Consumer Goods

OVERVIEW

Engineering design and simulation software is frequently highly complex, normally requiring significant familiarity and domain expertise to use properly. As a result, organizations are not able to fully exploit the potential benefits or maximize their ROI on such software assets.

P&G determined that software modeling tools are critical for the kind of innovation necessary to develop thousands of consumer products competitively, and has therefore invested heavily in a variety of modeling and simulation technologies. Realizing that the benefits of modeling and simulation could be scaled by orders of magnitude if only these tools could be made usable by a much wider and larger group, P&G turned to EASA to help democratize modeling tools as intuitive streamlined web apps.

THE PROBLEM

Only about 20% of P&G’s initiatives benefited from the application of their design tools. They needed a way to greatly improve the access and usability to enable many more engineering staff to leverage these assets.

The application of IT to problems in engineering and manufacturing (often simply referred to as Computer Aided Engineering or CAE) is usually associated with the auto or aerospace industry, not a consumer products company. However, modeling and simulation play a key role in many of P&G’s initiatives, from package or product design through process manufacturing and plant productivity.

Computer Aided Engineering at P&G was delivering tens of millions in savings per year, yet it was only being applied to 20% of the initiatives. There was an obvious opportunity to realize more savings if such a capability was more broadly accessible, but the steep learning curve for many of the tools used made this difficult. Sustainable and supportable systems architecture and associated work process changes were required to simplify and streamline access to modeling and simulation software.

The preference was to have this functionality web-enabled so that users would not need to install unfamiliar tools on their local desktops. A project was formed to deliver via the P&G intranet a common toolset and technology platform to simplify, deploy and automate any complex work processes involving existing software assets.

OUR SOLUTION

EASA enables P&G staff to rapidly create, without any programming skills, graphically rich web-enabled applications that automate and simplify access to software and hardware.

EASA enables P&G staff to rapidly create, without any programming skills, graphically rich web-enabled applications that automate and simplify access to software and hardware. EASA provides a layer of abstraction to multiple computing software packages, giving it cross-function and cross-business unit applicability, and facilitates simulation at multiple points from the beginning to the end of commercial initiatives.

EASA has excellent database connectivity capability, allowing for data-fed applications as well as integration with corporate repositories for storing and archiving results. It also has cross-platform capability, meaning Linux, UNIX, and Windows applications can be accessed seamlessly as part of any given work process. In addition, EASA has simple, secure, easy-to-maintain infrastructure resulting in high availability and reliability.

EASA’s authoring tools allow P&G’s staff to easily design, build and deploy custom tools. Authors can drag and drop predefined objects such as text input fields, menus, and choice lists needed on each input page. Authors can quickly define the inputs, processes, and outputs desired for each custom tool. The output may be tables, charts, graphs, images, or whatever the individual building the application deems appropriate for the user-audience.

The end-users access these custom applications through P&G’s intranet site. Users choose from a list of EASA applications and define the problem to be solved using simple input screens. The user’s input is automatically processed “behind the scenes” by a variety of existing tools, ranging from Excel all the way to legacy codes, databases, and high-end, expert-only engineering applications. When a submission is complete, the results are once again accessed via a browser. All jobs are archived to prevent wasted time solving the same problem more than once.

THE RESULTS

The previously expert-only applications, ranging from Excel to legacy codes, databases, and high-end, expert-only engineering applications were democratized, enabling far more staff to leverage the tools, increasing both competitiveness of their product development and obtaining a much-improved ROI on these assets.

Expanding usage of P&G’s existing software tools across more initiatives delivers hundreds of millions of dollars per fiscal year, and EASA is an enabling component. The value is clearly strong and P&G believes it will bear out as it begins to increase the number and usage of models and processes it automates and deploys using the EASA software package.

Other areas of application

An EASA application connected to a central Excel spreadsheet brings many benefits. For example, it means that everyone uses the same version of the spreadsheet; the IP contained in the spreadsheet is secured; and finally, the ease-of-use is improved. Another area of application for EASA is to create database interfaces which are tailored to specific applications. There is potential to leverage EASA to allow fast and easy analysis of marketing information, such as understanding or predicting the impact of a targeted promotion.

Benefits of Using EASA for Democratization of Simulation and Modeling

No special knowledge of Web technologies is required to produce robust web-enabled applications

EASA is intuitive to learn—new users can rapidly become productive

No need to transfer or rewrite complex formulas and data manipulation

End-users can only access the correct “certified” version of a tool, ensuring consistent usage

All confidential models and data is protected, even if it is embedded in key spreadsheets

Data can be “melded” across disparate systems and databases to provide a unified view for an application

HOW IT WORKS

Install EASA on your corporate network or in a public cloud

Get trained and begin to implement your application with our custom and live web-based training

Test and publish out to users

Maintain your spreadsheet as you currently do, uploading and republishing with a few simple “clicks”