Speaker
Robert COHEN
Description
As part of a study supported by EGEE, this analysis has
evaluated Grid adoption at Europe’s auto firms. It has
compared these findings to results from earlier studies of
Grid use in the auto industry in the US and Japan.
The study’s initial findings are that Europe’s automakers
have adopted Grids and are doing thousands of simulations a
day to support design, product development, and testing. In
at least one case, virtual cars are being used to manage
production.
One of the drivers for Grid deployment is the tremendous
cost savings they offer. Preliminary estimates from the
study suggest that during 2007-2010, auto firms will save
about 25% of production costs each year. This will be a
result of using Grids to support virtualized design and
product development and creating virtual cars for production.
European, American and Japanese auto firms are deploying
firm-wide Enterprise Grids at about the same pace, with most
firms expecting to have such Grids in place by 2009-2010.
Collaboration Grids with links to partner firms (Partner
Grids) are more evident in the US, but Europe and Japan will
deploy these more rapidly than US firms later this decade.
This preliminary analysis suggests that the IT-based model
of Grid adoption does not represent how auto firms are
adopting Grids. It suggests that Grid adoption is directly
linked to managing the complexity that results from being
able to use Grids. With thousands of simulations, auto firms
need higher-level management capabilities linked to Grids to
synchronize new findings with design models. With such
capabilities, including dynamic provisioning and feedback
mechanisms, Grid adoption would be faster.
