Dynamic, textural, and symbolic; whether they ambitiously defy gravity or grow organically from the landscape, iconic buildings frequently involve complex façades. Designed not only to protect, they also regulate variables such as thermal and visual comfort. From solar studies that allow optimization of the shading design in order to reduce cooling loads and maximize visual comfort, to the way in which fixing brackets for rainscreen cladding affect the integrity of the insulation, there are numerous challenges that can be resolved with the help of simulation.

Anisotropic materials behave differently depending on the direction they are loaded, but current methods of material production offer limited control over anisotropy. This limitation makes it difficult to exploit the advantages of anisotropic materials for product design. Researchers at TNO aimed to develop a procedure for designing manufacturable anisotropic structures using stiffness and topology optimization techniques. They sought to create materials with specific properties, such as twice the stiffness in one planar direction compared to another, and to extend these capabilities to multimaterial structures. The challenge was to optimize the local distribution and orientation of materials at the microlevel and then scale these optimizations to larger devices while maintaining feasible computation times.

One of the challenges of shaped metal deposition (SMD) is that thermal expansion of the molten metal can deform the cladding as it cools, resulting in a final product that is different than what was anticipated. To predict the outcome of a proposed design, it is necessary to either minimize the deformations or alter the design to account for them. This requires solving a time-dependent coupled thermomechanical analysis that predicts residual thermal stresses and deformation, which arise from SMD thermal cycles.

Engineers at ETREMA Products, Inc. face the challenge of designing devices using magnetostrictive materials, which change shape when exposed to a magnetic field. These materials are crucial for the production of transducers, sensors, and other high-powered electrical devices. The unique properties of magnetostrictive materials, such as their ability to mechanically respond to magnetic fields and their characteristic nonlinearity, make designing these devices complex. The challenge is to accurately represent the material properties and complex physics interactions within such devices to facilitate the production of the next generation of smart products.

Nordson had successfully established a global market presence—but lacked the structure and tools to ensure brand cohesion. Given the decentralized nature of their organization, each division had their own approach to translating and localizing content for their market. As a result, the content intended to represent their brand with a singular voice and style was being interpreted by several different vendors. Not surprisingly, Nordson noticed inconsistencies with how their company’s message was being communicated and with the quality of the translations. Nordson’s mission to provide reliable, top-tier services to their customers drove them to reevaluate this initial digital globalization strategy. They needed flexible, accurate website translation support that could be implemented quickly and at scale. Lionbridge had the tools and expertise to meet that need.

Philips Personal Health faced challenges with the creation, translation, and publication process of its Directions for Use (DFUs). The company struggled with variable quality, long turnaround times, and an inefficient review process. Philips aimed to make the DFU creation process 25% more efficient by reducing changes during the process, increasing standardization and reuse, reducing resources spent on reviews, gaining efficiency at publication, and improving the reliability and efficiency of the documentation system. Philips needed a language service provider (LSP) that could integrate seamlessly with Author-it to streamline the translation process and create efficiencies through increased automation and centralization. Their previous LSP could not integrate with Author-it, but Lionbridge could, making it an attractive option for Philips.

With an increasing number of international trials and an ever-changing global regulatory environment, the challenges associated with Investigational Medicinal Product (IMP) labeling grow every day. Lengthening production timelines, errors and inconsistencies, and a demanding process of managing different vendors across global trials are some of the key issues faced. These challenges can lead to delays of four, six, or even eight weeks for a single panel label. Additionally, multiple vendors across studies can result in outright translation and regulatory mistakes, making the process even more demanding for robust organizations.

There were several obstacles complicating the CRO’s path to optimized translation operations: A decentralized process, which had arisen from regional autonomy in both the initiation and management of translation projects. Multiple disparate systems housing the content and data required through the translation process. Varying methods of translation review being conducted in the regions. Translation hurdles that included inconsistencies, errors, slow turnaround times, capacity and language limits, along with highly inefficient communication. Hundreds of global team members across the Americas, Europe, and Asia with pressing translation project needs. The CRO needed a partner who tackle all its operational obstacles and help establish a model to prioritize its needs and enable a manageable scale-up and execution schedule.

Around the world, the popularity of voice search is only growing. As our client seeks to provide fast and accurate search and voice assistance services to users of every major language worldwide, it must understand a variety of voice-activated queries in multiple languages. Global speakers of major languages expect voice-activated apps and search engines to fully and correctly understand voice queries, regardless of the type of voice, regional accent, age, gender, device used, or surrounding environment. With billions of global users and the complexities of processing natural language, fully and correctly recognizing any user’s speech in any language is our client’s complex challenge.

The client wanted to make sense of their 20+ years’ worth of accumulated GTD content, which accounted for more than 100,000 documents and media files translating to 9 Terabytes of data. They needed a solution that could transcribe, summarize, conduct sentiment analysis, enable semantic search, and organize their data. This would help them deliver relevant knowledge to both current GTD practitioners and others looking for specific solutions to challenges in their lives. The client explored all major cloud vendors from the Gartner Magic Quadrant, including Amazon, Google, and IBM. However, they found these solutions to be expensive, geared towards large enterprises, and requiring third-party IT vendors for custom solutions. The client felt there was a gap in the market for companies like them with limited users.

Kiwibank needed a solution to monitor and reduce computer energy consumption without disrupting users. It also needed to wake computers up out of business hours to patch them. A key requirement was to find a solution that integrated with Kiwibank’s existing Microsoft Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) platform.

Park Hill School District faced a challenge in managing user requests for new software. The existing process was slow, manual, and resource-intensive, requiring users to raise help desk tickets and wait several days for software installation. This inefficiency led to IT being perceived as inflexible, as it couldn't offer users the choice and flexibility they desired. The district needed a solution that integrated with their existing Systems Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) and Active Directory, providing a user-friendly interface for on-demand self-service software installation.

Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority needed to reduce the energy costs associated with powering end user equipment. It also needed to deploy software patches and upgrades to those machines in a more effective and efficient manner.

Like most public sector organizations, the Council was under great pressure to deliver a diverse range of services on an increasingly constrained budget. Having identified energy consumption as an area where it could make savings, the council needed a solution that would allow it to monitor and reduce computer energy consumption without disrupting users.

Saint-Gobain needed an efficient way to deploy software patches and upgrades to 100,000 desktops across 6000 branch offices. Managing the IT network and architecture for a multinational organization of this magnitude is a sizeable task. The PC Solution Team is responsible for delivering all the tools to manage the company’s 100,000 workstations. In 2008 the team chose to implement Microsoft Systems Management Platform across the group to create better collaboration and improve productivity. The standard architecture for the Microsoft platform is for each geo-location to have a dedicated, or ‘branch’ server. For Saint-Gobain this would have meant investing in, and maintaining at least 6000 servers. The PC team sought an alternative solution that would avoid having to put a server into each branch office. The team decided to research the possibility of using SCCM and Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) GPO and found a considerable reduction of servers would be possible but that they would still require a 1,000-strong server farm.

In 2010, Bacardi decided to create a standard desktop lifecycle within the organization. The goal was to achieve a uniform environment for software deployment, security, and user experience across its 130 locations worldwide. However, the global dispersal of Bacardi's footprint presented several challenges in implementation. Initially, Bacardi's IT infrastructure was managed by a service provider using 1E solutions like Nomad and Shopping in conjunction with Microsoft's Configuration Manager (SCCM). Over time, Bacardi's IT team saw potential benefits in bringing the control of this infrastructure in-house, aiming for cost savings and increased agility, especially with the upcoming Windows 10 rollout.

On average, 60% of PCs were being left on after work on weekdays and over the weekend at Aviva. A key carbon efficiency measure implemented by the sustainable IT taskforce was a PC power management project with 1E.

Deutsche Telekom faced the challenge of building a new, elastically scalable model for their core central-office data center optimized for performance, low latency, and cost. They needed to deliver IPv4 services to customers in a native IPv6 network and automatically provision IPv4 and other L4-7 services quickly and efficiently. The architecture had to comply with core ETSI NFV documents while maintaining simplicity and openness. The demand for broadband had exploded, and customers wanted always-on connectivity without paying a premium, driving average revenue per user (ARPU) lower. Traditional service delivery times were no longer competitive, requiring weeks or months to configure using conventional networking technologies.

Box, a rapidly expanding company, needed to manage explosive growth and increased customer demands on its network. The company required predictable scalability, reliability, and high throughput to manage its production environment’s high volume of application connections. Box had been using A10’s AX2100 ADCs but needed to add more capacity and features to support its growth strategy, which included increasing its customer base globally, expanding its presence with existing customers, targeting industry verticals, extending its sales reach through channel/strategic partners, and expanding its platform ecosystem.

Wi2 faced the challenge of global IPv4 address exhaustion while experiencing a rapidly increasing number of users. The company used to assign public IPv4 addresses to client devices, but with the depletion of available IPv4 addresses and the expected surge in connecting devices, effective utilization and preservation of IPv4 addresses became critical. The need for a solution that could expand the capacity of each IPv4 address and maintain high application transparency and stability was imperative.