Q. What kind of operations do you use Questetra for?
FUJI HEAVY INDUSTRIES LTD. (currently “Subaru Corporation”) is a transportation equipment manufacturer with a focus on automotive manufacturing.
In the automotive business we develop, manufacture and sell cars such as the Legacy, Impreza, and Forester under the Subaru brand, based on the concepts of enjoyment and peace of mind.
We are utilizing Questetra to improve the efficiency of simulations in automotive engine development operations.
Q. How did you achieve the improvement of the efficiency?
Engine development is a repetitive process of blueprint drawing, prototyping, and performance and reliability evaluations. However, the performance and reliability evaluations can now be done virtually with recently developed simulation technology. Thanks to this, it is now possible to obtain more information to improve the product competitiveness faster than when evaluating through prototyping.
On the other hand, developers need to ask experts to run the simulations, as they require complicated operations and expertise.
Hence, we are promoting the automation of simulations because we believe that we can make better products faster and more efficiently if the developers are able to exercise their creativity and do the simulations by themselves. We are using Questetra as a management control tool for this.
Q. What are the main characteristics of the mechanisms for which you use Questetra?
Automation of simulation has been addressed in various ways, but in most cases it is developed as a mere tool.
We put emphasis on the availability of information sharing between the developers and the simulation expert so that they would complement each other. Therefore, we have arranged the Tasks for the developers and for the simulation experts alternately on the Workflow, so that communication between them can occur.
We also took advantage of the characteristics of human-centric BPM to decentralize tasks so that work can be divided among different departments.
Q. Do you have any suggestions for Questetra?
Up until now, when automating simulations we only focused on the functions and left the operations to humans. Because we are now able to visualize the Workflow, we are able to operate as it was defined by using Questetra. Now all of us can discuss both the aspects of function and operation.
Meanwhile, in order to promote the further automation of simulations in the future, it is necessary to increase the number of people who are capable of drawing a workflow. I guess the easier the Process Modeler becomes, the more people can draw a Workflow. (For example, by adding features to test run process models or replicating any part of the flow.)
