The world market may have weathered the current uncertainty prevailing in the U.S. economy, but some companies have yet to successfully navigate their way through financial recovery. Many are still mired in the aftermath of announcement that the U.S. has been removed from Standard & Poor's list of risk-free borrowers. Either way, in these tough times company executives seem to struggle in trying to integrate these two opposing initiatives:

• Cost savings to mitigate the negative impact of the economic climate on sales


• Innovation that can propel a company beyond the crisis as quickly as possible

Neither of these initiatives can be sacrificed for the other, especially for companies that are seeking to do more than just merely stay afloat. The challenge is finding practical ways to accomplish both objectives at once.

While their competition is reeling from the impact of Standard & Poor’s downgrading the U.S, debt capacity, visionary companies are taking advantage of this time to push themselves ahead of the pack through innovation. Obviously, the first companies to emerge from these tough times will be tomorrow's leaders.

New solutions are necessary not only to create or sustain this business leadership but also to address major challenges facing manufacturing companies today and in the years to come:

• Product integrity is a must have in highly competitive markets. Product failures and recalls cost companies dearly. A product that needs to be repaired or replaced severely cuts into profits and badly damages brand image.


• Product safety is an ongoing concern across all industries. Minimizing — or, better yet, eliminating — risk of injury from the use of a company's products and processes is always a top priority. Products need to be safe throughout their entire life cycle.


• Green design is increasingly important, with sustainability and ecological issues leading to unprecedented levels of innovation in product development processes.

Companies are locked in a race to the finish line, and the focus today is on innovation. Winning at developing high-demand, high-quality products means breaking with the past and redesigning legacy product development processes that decrease costs, shorten time to market and reduce financial risks.

Business as usual is no longer an option. For major innovations, the traditional approach of creating numerous physical prototypes and conducting lengthy test cycles for each design is not practical because doing so would require large budgets that cut into profits, and long development cycles that often bring products to market too late. Rather, new processes must be implemented so that companies can design higher-quality, innovative products on time and at lower cost.

According to a report from the Aberdeen group, best-in-class companies utilize engineering simulation to systematically design new products in the virtual world. Such companies spring back from tough times faster than competitors by optimizing their development process and implementing a get-it-right-the-first-time strategy by predicting and analyzing product behavior earlier in the design process. They also evaluate more design iterations in the concept/design stage.

There is no doubt anymore about the potential benefits of engineering simulation, and laggards will quickly experience the downside of non-adoption: an inability to maintain innovative competitiveness. Tomorrow's leaders will systematically develop detailed virtual models, leveraging these simulation tools to optimize cost savings and innovative new designs that will yield huge competitive gains in the coming years.