Ford Wins Project of the Year Award at WITNESS User Conference 2014

Henley-in-Arden, UK – 31 March 2014 – Lanner, a provider of simulation software proven to maximise performance and optimise resources, today announced that Ford Motor Company (Ford) has won Project of the Year in its Annual Simulation Awards.  Presented by Lanner CEO David Jones at the WITNESS 2014 User Conference, Ford fended off global competition to accept the award for outstanding achievements in simulation and modelling. 

Nominated projects were judged against a range of criteria including scope of the modelling; structure of the solution; and results achieved. Ford was selected as a clear winner based on a major step change in simulation capabilities, including a major performance shift in experimentation capabilities through the deployment of WITNESS across a High Performance Computing (HPC) environment; streamlined data entry and model structure; and the ability to rapidly furnish planning teams with reports and information they needed to make key decisions which resulted in $multi-million cost savings during 2013.     

“Best in class projects from organisations around the world were nominated for these awards, and Ford was a clear winner having taken its simulation capabilities to new levels over the last 12 months,” comments David Jones, CEO, Lanner.  “We are immensely proud to celebrate the achievements of our customers, and as long standing and innovative users of WITNESS, John Ladbrook and his team at Ford thoroughly deserve this recognition.”

“I see this award as a real honour having competed with some of the world’s leading simulation projects,” comments John Ladbrook, Simulation Technical Expert at Ford Motor Company.  “Extended thanks must go to Ford’s MEPT Simulation Team, especially Shahriar Saghri, Joshua Catana, IT Software Architect at Ford and Jeremy Horgan, Head of Technology at Lanner, who have played key roles in the development of our simulation tools and leading the HPC deployment on our behalf.”

“Having boosted our simulation activities substantially over the last year or so, I am excited to build on this success further in the next 12 months.  As demand for greater volumes of models and increased complexity continues to escalate, we intend to increase our use of HPC.  We are also considering how advanced analytics can be used in conjunction with predictive simulation to model even greater degrees of complexity and drive new levels of experimentation to support our production facilities worldwide,” John adds.  “We are already looking forward to putting our current projects forward for next year’s awards!”