Choosing between an FEA consultancy and FEA software

If analysis is a steady part of your development work, with similar problems each time, building in-house FEA capability usually pays for itself: engineers learn the product, studies fit into design iterations and the knowledge stays in the company. If studies arrive irregularly, span different physics, or need experience your team does not yet have, outsourcing to an FEA consultancy usually gives a dependable answer sooner, and often at lower total cost. Many companies end up with a mix, running routine linear studies in-house and bringing in outside specialists for non-linear, fatigue, CFD or multiphysics work and for peaks in demand.

The software licence is rarely what decides it. Finite element tools are widely available and increasingly easy to start using. The scarce part is judgement: which simplifications are safe, which loads and supports represent the real product, which failure mode governs, and how results translate into design changes. That judgement takes years to build and fades quickly without regular use. The question is where it should sit for the work you have.

Three ways to get analysis done

• In-house. Buy or subscribe to software, provide hardware or use a cloud platform, and train or hire engineers to run studies.
• Outsourced. Commission studies from an FEA consultancy, which brings the tools, the experience and the time.
• Mixed. Keep the frequent, familiar work in-house and place specialist, unfamiliar or overflow studies with a consultancy.

How the options compare

What an in-house capability involves

The software is the visible part. A working in-house capability also needs:

• People with time. Analysis squeezed into the gaps between design tasks tends to be rushed or postponed.
• Training and experience. Courses teach the tool. An understanding of how real products are loaded, supported and fail comes from many studies over several years.
• Material data. Fatigue curves and non-linear or temperature-dependent properties, which are often harder to obtain than the software.
• Access to standards. The codes your products are designed to, and a working knowledge of how they treat analysis.
• Continuity. Someone to hold the templates, assumptions and lessons learned when the original analyst moves on.

Capability

Analysis types differ in how much experience they demand. A linear static study of a single machined part is well within reach of a trained design engineer. Contact between many parts, plasticity, large deformation, fatigue under variable loading, transient impact, turbulent flow and coupled thermal and structural problems demand more, because the modelling choices have a larger effect on the answer and the failure modes are less obvious. An in-house team typically becomes strong in the analysis types it uses most. A consultancy working across sectors sees more variety, including the unusual cases where experience counts most.

Utilisation

Utilisation is where the economics are decided. Licences, training and the time of a trained analyst are largely fixed costs. If studies come every week, those costs are spread thinly and the skills stay sharp. If an engineer runs a study once every few months, much of each study is spent relearning the tool and the method, and the fixed costs fall on very few results. Count the studies your team actually needed over the last two years, by type, before deciding. Our guide to what drives the cost of simulation explains what makes individual studies larger or smaller.

Speed

In-house analysis can start the moment a question arises, which suits fast design iterations. Often, though, the analyst is also a designer, and studies compete with other deadlines. An outside team needs a brief, geometry and loads before it can start, but then gives the study its full attention. For a single urgent question outside your team’s usual work, that is often the quicker route to a dependable answer.

Accountability and risk

With an in-house team, ownership of the answer is clear, and so is the risk that comes with it. The main hazards are key-person dependency, skills that fade between studies, and contour plots that look persuasive whatever the quality of the set-up behind them. With a consultancy, accountability is defined by the agreed scope and the report, which should set out the assumptions, loads, materials and conclusions clearly enough for your team to act on and to revisit later. The main hazards are lost context, when the consultant does not understand how the product is used, and dependence on a supplier for knowledge you would rather keep. A good brief, and a consultancy that understands design as well as analysis, reduce both.

Confidentiality applies either way. It is normal to put a confidentiality agreement in place before sending CAD, and any consultancy should expect to sign one.

When each option makes sense

In-house

• Analysis is needed frequently, on similar products, such as a family of frames, brackets or housings.
• Studies are part of day-to-day design iteration rather than occasional milestones.
• You have, or can hire, engineers with real analysis experience, and enough work to keep it current.

Outsourced

• Studies arise a few times a year, or in peaks around product launches.
• The physics is unfamiliar: impact, fatigue, CFD, conjugate heat transfer, electromagnetics or coupled problems.
• A customer or partner expects a formal report setting out the analysis, its assumptions and its conclusions.
• A lot rides on one answer, such as a failure in service or an expensive tooling decision.

Mixed

• Your team handles linear studies of familiar parts and wants specialist support for the rest.
• Demand is steady, with occasional peaks that would otherwise delay projects.
• You are building in-house capability and want outside experience on the harder studies while it grows.

Making a mixed arrangement work

Most of the friction in a mixed arrangement sits at the boundary between the two teams. A short written split, saying which analysis types stay in-house and which go outside, stops the same study being started twice or not at all. Geometry travels most easily as STEP or a native CAD format, and the loads, materials and limits are best stated once, in a brief both sides work from.

Ask for the model and its assumptions as well as the report, so your own engineers can rerun a load case or pick the work up later. It also pays to choose an outside team that designs as well as analyses. A study showing that a bracket needs a thicker web, or a casting a different rib layout, has done only half its job until that change is in the CAD and on the drawing.

Signs the current arrangement needs a rethink

• Studies are regularly postponed because the one person who runs them is busy with design work.
• Licences sit unused for months between projects.
• The same type of study is commissioned outside several times a year, which suggests it could be brought in-house.
• Problems are reaching prototypes or customers that analysis could have shown earlier.

Questions to settle before you decide

• How many studies did we need in the last two years, of which types, and how many were urgent?
• Which failure modes and physics do our products face?
• Who would own an in-house capability, and what happens if they leave?
• Which decisions do the results feed, and who needs to read the report?
• Which knowledge must stay in the company, and which can sit with a supplier?

When to bring in a specialist

If the answers point to outsourcing or a mix, SixGate™ takes on single studies or analysis within a full development programme, across FEA and structural mechanics, CFD, thermal, electromagnetic and multiphysics work. You get answers to the questions you set, the design changes that follow from them, and a report your team can act on. Because analysis sits inside the detail design and simulation stage, the engineers who recommend a change can also make it in the CAD, produce the drawings and take the part into production. Engineering firms looking to extend their own capacity can find more on our engineering services page.