Introduction
In 1962, a talented engineer named Kelly Johnson designed a new
surveillance plane for the U.S. Government. He designed the plane,
dubbed the SR-71 in just a few weeks using only a slide rule and
a scratchpad. Thirty-five years later, the SR-71 is still the
among the most advanced aircraft ever built.
Johnson was able to accomplish this incredible feat at the Lockheed
"Skunkworks" because his team was concerned only with
results. Johnson's team did not have to meet standards, was not
held to a budget and was not integrating the SR-71 with other
projects. Johnson's results may be legendary, but today, such
an effort would never fly.
Outside of a "Skunkworks," engineers and engineering
managers must balance business needs with ultimate results and
take into account factors outside of pure engineering and design.
For engineering and technical organizations to contribute to a
company's bottom line, products that provide business benefits
should be integrated into their overall business and organizational
structure. These products can provide not only engineering results,
but critical benefits such as:
While it is possible, within an engineering organization, to get results using many different calculation tools such as calculators, spreadsheets and ad hoc computer programs-or even with slide rules-factors such as productivity; knowledge capture and knowledge retention; international standards; and return on investment are critical as well.
Problem statement
Managers in engineering and technical organizations today have
critical challenges in managing technical projects. Engineering
and scientific organizations within businesses have to show a
return on their investment, meet productivity levels, capture
valuable knowledge, meet standards and integrate into project
management environments.
The scientific and calculation tools used within the organization
can contribute to-or hinder-this effort.
Scattered throughout most companies' business, scientific and
research organizations today is a disparate set of calculation
tools. These include calculators, custom-programmed applications
and accounting spreadsheets. In many organizations there are also
specialized calculation software packages. But since most organizations
lack a technical computing strategy, these software packages are
usually randomly deployed, often purchased by the users themselves
and frequently underutilized. Because of this, although most engineering,
research and scientific organizations within companies may have
critical business tools available, they have not integrated them
into an organizational environment in a way that provides business
benefits such as productivity, knowledge capture, standards compliance
and optimal project management efficiency.
Calculators
Calculators are seen by many as the most critical tool of the
engineering or research professional. Yet the pocket calculator,
while marvelously suited for quick 'scratchpad' calculations and
portability, is very poorly suited to the large engineering organization
or project environment. Calculators are not optimized for productivity,
they fail to capture knowledge or document processes and, because
they do not produce accurate, shareable documents, they are unsuited
for integration into a team environment.
Custom-programmed applications
To perform complex and critical engineering and scientific calculations, many engineers and research professionals rely on creating their own ad-hoc programs that will run on systems ranging from desktop PCs to giant supercomputers. Because of the flexibility of programming languages such as FORTRAN or C, very complex problems can be modeled and solved. However, this solution has its drawbacks. Reusability is minimal, since these programs are usually designed to solve a narrow problem set. Since the critical assumptions behind a calculation get bound in the code, ad-hoc programs become hard to understand and maintain. Due to the time it takes to learn a language and then create and debug a program, productivity becomes an issue and ad-hoc programs are generally not suitable for smaller tasks. And, in the team or business environment, these programs fail to communicate the calculation process and method.
Spreadsheets
Spreadsheets are strong general business and productivity tools
that are good for presenting data and performing simple arithmetic.
They address many critical communications and project management
issues and are de-facto desktop standards, designed to work across
large groups or enterprises. These mainstream programs allow sharing
of data, and they keep a record of calculations and so breed confidence
in the results. They meet ISO and similar guidelines for tracking
processes and they fit well into project management environments.
Because they are general productivity tools, however, they do
not have the capacity for the more specific needs of technical
projects. Spreadsheets are limited in the calculations they normally
perform, so projects requiring visualization of expressions and
equations require tedious programming and do not adequately document
the calculations. They also do not handle a number of key technical
calculation requirements, such as statistics and units of measure.
For these reasons, spreadsheets alone do not adequately meet the
needs of the engineer, scientist or technical professional within
a corporate environment.
Engineering and Scientific Calculation Software Packages
There is a specialized group of software packages designed to
meet the needs of engineering, research and scientific organizations
within businesses. This software addresses productivity by offering
engineers, scientists and technical professionals a white-board-like
interface that lets them easily perform calculations using real
math notation. Moreover, this software is capable of performing
the most complex mathematical operations with total confidence
in results. It is optimized for knowledge sharing and it is designed
to be deployed as a desktop standard in the corporate engineering,
scientific or research environment. And, it can serve as the integrator
for a variety of tools such as spreadsheets, CAD/CAM/CAE tools,
graphics tools and even ad-hoc computer programs, providing a
central calculation tool for engineering and technical professionals.
Well-designed calculation software packages meet the specific
needs of the millions of technical professionals and are as intuitive
for them to use as a spreadsheet is for an accountant.
The most advanced and most popular of these packages is Mathcad Professional from MathSoft. It is used by hundreds of thousands of professionals as a stand-alone tool and is poised to become the common, standard environment for technical departments.
The Mathcad Solution
Close to a million professionals have moved beyond the calculator,
beyond ad-hoc programming and beyond the spreadsheet to take advantage
of software optimized for their unique needs. Mathcad is deployed
within more than half the Fortune 1,000 companies. It is used
in more than 500 government installations ranging from NASA to
the Department of Energy. In addition, it is being used by the
students and faculty at more than 2,000 colleges and universities.
Mathcad is a powerful, easy-to-use, integrated technical calculation
product built to work like a 'live' scratchpad, solving math problems
as they are entered on the screen using real math notation. (Just
like the electronic spreadsheet, which adopted a well-known way
of tracking numbers on paper and made it more accurate and productive,
Mathcad replicates the paper-based methods and notations that
engineers and scientists have proven effective through daily use
for ages. Mathcad takes these scratchpad methods and adds the
power of an automated engine to solve computations and increase
productivity.) Mathcad provides engineers and technical professionals
with an interactive environment for solving real-world problems
using a comprehensive set of numeric and symbolic mathematical
and data analysis features, 2-D and 3-D graphing and visualization
capabilities, and tools for collaboration, including built-in
Internet connectivity. A new version of Mathcad now incorporates
features that allow it to serve as an integrator, linking together
a variety of tools that engineers and technical professionals
use. This will help manage the flow of data and calculations,
break down complex systems and calculations into components, and
make communication of complex calculations and processes easier
through self-documentation.
Mathcad has achieved this broad user base because it addresses
the critical business and organizational needs of productivity,
knowledge capture, standards compliance and effective project
management within the engineering or technical organization.
How Mathcad Meets These Needs
Productivity: Because Mathcad is designed with the
needs of technical professionals in mind, productivity is optimized.
As much as a tenfold increase in productivity can be expected
when an organization starts using Mathcad, according to user surveys.
Productivity gains come as a result of several features built
into the product. The scratchpad-like interface is familiar to
the technical professional and is easy to learn and to use. The
'live' nature of the interface means that calculations can be
rapidly re-run and modified to reach engineering solutions without
tedious programming or punching keys on a pocket calculator. Extensive
libraries of formulas and reusable 'drag and drop' equations are
both built into the product and are readily accessible via the
Internet to make setting up complex calculations fast and easy.
Also, Mathcad is the only technical tool specifically designed
to work with other applications. Fully Windows 95-compliant, Mathcad
links to and shares information with other common business and
productivity tools, extending the power and range of the corporate
desktop. Finally, calculations performed with Mathcad are known
to be accurate. This confidence in results leads to minimized
need for auditing and re-auditing data, improved traceability
and ultimately, increased productivity.
Knowledge Capture: Mathcad is designed to be self-documenting
and to securely store complex calculations for reuse, modification
or even validation at a later date. This means that companies
can capture the valuable information and knowledge being generated
in engineering, scientific and technical organizations. Because
Mathcad is fully integrated with corporate intranets as well as
the Internet or extranets, it is easy to transfer calculations
between organizations and to create or access data repositories.
This internetworking capability also makes it easy to link to
databases where engineering knowledge and processes can be documented
long-term within an organization. For research organizations where
it is critical to publish and communicate data either inside or
outside the organization, Mathcad also provides a solution. Mathcad
is the only tool that can publish 'live math' with electronic
text so users can create content rich documents with math notations
that can be used in place or lifted to other documents or worksheets.
Mathcad enables links between HTML pages and math content for
first-ever Web publishing of this sort. As a result, Mathcad can
serve as an important publishing platform for corporate LANs or
intranets, electronic books or for more traditional outlets for
published works such as research journals or textbooks.
Standards Compliance: To meet the range of internal
and external quality standards, including ISO 9000, it is critical
to use standardized processes and to carefully document those
processes. Because Mathcad enables tracking of the calculation
and scientific process, it greatly simplifies the ability to maintain
standards and meet ISO and similar guidelines. Mathcad fits into
Product Data Management (PDM) environments that help track components
throughout their development, manufacture and lifecycle. By integrating
into PDM systems that are gaining popularity within complex engineering
projects, Mathcad can provide an integrated calculation component
critical to complex development efforts such as aircraft, power
plants, civil engineering projects and similar large-scale projects.
Effective Project Management: While today Mathcad
frequently is used as a standalone application, it is optimized
for use as a standard desktop scientific and math calculation
package and for deployment across an organization. When internetworked
throughout the technical organization, Mathcad's contribution
to success becomes greater than the sum of its parts. To optimize
and simplify technical project management in a business organization,
Mathcad is designed to easily share and exchange information across
an enterprise and even across disparate systems, letting users
take full and simultaneous advantage of Mathcad, their standard
desktop applications and the resources of the corporate network
or Internet. This is achieved on three levels: