I recently visited an assembly plant of a major corporation. I was impressed with the efficiently coordinated activities, as well as the meticulous attention to quality and safety. I saw manufacturing governance in action. My own field is computer-aided engineering (CAE) and I could not avoid noting the sharp contrast between what I saw in the assembly plant and the casual, even chaotic practices in simulation and analysis (S&A) that I have witnessed. Recognizing that S&A is increasingly important in guiding engineering decisions, I would like to make a case for simulation governance. There are substantial economic incentives to reduce reliance on physical testing and increase reliance on numerical simulation. Testing is expensive and time consuming, and the results of physical experiments are tied to the specific conditions under which they are performed. Testing without planning on how the results will be interpreted and generalized makes no sense.
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