Security, collaboration and cost barriers reduction allows a focus on design projects—not IT issues.
In today’s business world, manufacturers compete to deliver leading-edge products to market as fast as possible, without sacrificing quality. Whether it is a new car, airplane, fighter jet, 
tractor or consumer mobile device, engineers must be able to untether themselves from the old-world physical workstations, while retaining the design tools, performance and features they need to complete their projects.
Engineers need to collaborate with geographically dispersed teams, while being productive at anytime, anywhere and on any device is critical to today’s engineers at all manufacturers. Collaboration needs to be possible without sacrificing security of proprietary designs or the performance of those high-scale workstations. This is why companies today are turning to VMware Horizon and NVIDIA GRID’s joint solution to deliver a rich graphics experience in today’s any device, mobile world.
[Related: AEC Firms Reap the Benefits of Cloud Desktops with NVIDIA GRID & VMware Horizon]
This joint solution from VMware and NVIDIA eliminates the old limits placed on the design process for new products. The benefits realized for our manufacturing customers are in:
Collaboration
No longer are global companies tied to transferring large files and data sets thousands of miles away, wasting 10-12 hours in a day. With files and data sets centralized, anyone can now access information and work together from anywhere in real time.
Security
Data leakage and security concerns have become manageable. It is no longer about who has which files on which device, whether that device is secure or if it will be lost in an airport or coffee shop. It is now about data being secure in a central corporate location and managing who has access to what data, when they have access and what data employees and contractors need to access.
Scalability
VMware and NVIDIA manufacturing customers now have 5,000-20,000 engineers who can access design files from a single location. They can now work in real time on product design, with the performance and graphic experience they each would expect from a dedicated single workstation.
Efficiency
Engineers and contractors alike can now be trained on tools and projects, while being integrated into the design process quickly—instead of flying to a central location for training. Worldwide design reviews can be held remotely, accessing the designs in real time. Employee and contractor onboarding and access now takes minutes—not hours or days.
[Related: vGPU-powered GIS Mapping: Data-driven Decision Making with VMware, NVIDIA & ESRI ArcGIS]
Productivity
As the above benefits are realized, design projects can be delivered faster. Leveraging VMware and NVIDIA solutions, manufacturers can remove barriers such as:
- Location;
- Security limitations ;
- Bandwidth delays to move large data sets to the correct teams each day; and
- Cost limitations to give high-performance graphic workstations to a larger engineering team.
The business process is drastically simplified, allowing the manufacture to focus on delivering high-quality products in a shorter amount of time, instead of managing IT headaches.
The Manufacturing Benefits in Action
I want to share a recent story about the benefits that have been experienced by a joint VMware and NVIDIA car manufacturer:
Tofas is a Turkish automotive manufacturer with over 6,500 employees and producer of over 
400,000 passenger cars and light commercial vehicles per year. Tofa is jointly held by Koc Holding and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA). Tofas pursued the Horizon and GRID solution to increase worker mobility and enhance data security. The solution needed to provide similar performance as the physical workstations running 3D applications Siemens NX and Autodesk AutoCAD. Tofas’ previous methodology required a workstation for the graphic work and a second computer for general office work. Mobility was not possible, as the laptops used would not support the 
CAD applications. Management of the multiple systems by IT became a headache, with software patch and security updates taking time from core objectives. Additionally, hardware downtime for maintenance or failure resulted in time lost for the current design project.
The Horizon and GRID solution was able to deliver superior graphics performance and freed designers and engineers from their physical 
workstations, enabling mobile development and collaboration. IT overhead was reduced, thanks to the centralization of the CAD applications, with the data and delivery of design projects to devices versus being stored locally. Now, new employees, contractors and designers can be put on a project instantly without setting up workstations or shipping hardware.
What Manufacturers Are Saying about the Horizon & GRID Solution
“Virtual workstations are not only effective for the R&D teams, but also for the manufacturing
teams, as they are also enabled with Teamcenter Manufacturing. Two hundred fifty employees from the manufacturing teams can work in a secure virtual workstation pool of 60 clients in three shifts. Therefore, more people can make use of the pool at any time of day or night.” —Emre Ülgen, client systems and service management specialist, Tofaş
“Airbus decided to implement virtual desktops to streamline end-user access and easily
enable suppliers to access major applications supporting Airbus aircraft development. We’re strongly interested in using VMware Horizon with NVIDIA GRID vGPU to be able to offer a scalable and cost-effective solution. The power of the combined offering will allow us to achieve an even more efficient business case.” —Philippe Muhlhause, head of EE M&A architecture and standards, Airbus
Are You Heading to NVIDIA GTC 2016?
Discover how graphics-accelerated enabled desktops improve end-user productivity, streamline IT management and save time and money, while increasing the security of your company’s intellectual property. Check out all the sessions VMware and NVIDIA are offering by visiting the schedule-builder page here.
Featured VMware Session
Delivering 3D Workstations with Horizon and GRID
Join us for a panel discussion led by Luke Wignall, Manager, GRID Performance Engineering, NVIDIA, and Pat Lee, Sr. Director, Mobile Experience, VMware. Kurt Miller, Information Officer for Cannon Designs, will share his experiences and insights gained by moving 3D workstations to the data center with GRID and Horizon, enabling dynamic collaborative design.
- For conference registration and a 20% discount, use code GRIDVMW to register.
- For more information on Horizon 7, visit vmware.com/go/horizon.
- For more information on GRID, visit nvidia.com/grid.
- To join the NVIDIA/VMware Community, visit nvidia.com/nvc.
