data driven with lotus f1 - september 2013

© 2013 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved.

DATADRIVEN

CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT

SEPTEMBER 2013

Discover the battle to keep ahead of the maunfacturing game!

Kimi takes third in Singapore Grand Prix

PODIUM FINISH!

Win an exclusive Lotus F1 Team Goodie Bag!

COMPETITION!


CONTENTS

FOREWORD

The pace is relentless, and the pressure always felt. What marks 2014 as a standout year are the sport’s technical changes, and they are this year’s headache as well as the next. The effect is one that is found in many areas of enterprise in these challenging economic times: you’ve got more work to do, and no extra resource. It’s how you do more with less, and this is Avanade’s task in assisting Lotus F1 Team achieve maximum efficiency.

Today, the vast majority of car development in F1 takes place far away from the world’s race tracks on computer screens back at the factory. In years gone by they had a separate test team travelling to Silverstone, Italy, Spain and the South of France, covering several thousands of real life testing kilometers every week. No longer. With cost cutting restrictions,

there is now a reliance on Computer Aided Design, Computational Fluid Dynamics and Race Car Simulations.

Using these tools to develop the 2013 and 2014 cars in tandem is demanding and requires efficient use of resources and coordinated communication between the design tools and designers.

In this second issue of Data Driven, we will discover how the Lotus F1 Team design office juggles its dual development targets.

FORMULA ONE DESIGNERS ARE THE HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONS

OF MULTITASKING. NOT ONLY ARE THEY REFINING AND IMPROVING

THE CARS YOU SEE OUT ON TRACK THIS SEASON, AT THE SAME

TIME THEY ARE DEVISING NEXT YEAR’S ALL-NEW MACHINES. AND,

DURING THE FEW HOURS A DAY THAT THEY’RE NOT AT THEIR DESKS,

THEY’RE PROBABLY THINKING ABOUT 2015 AS WELL.

THE PACE IS RELENTLESS AND THE PRESSURE IS ALWAYS FELT.

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Data Driven Issue 02

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03 FOREWORD

04 GRAND PRIX RACE REPORTS

06 CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT [VIDEO]

06 CONTINUOUS DUAL DEVELOPMENT

10 FOCUS IN: BUSINESS PRACTICES

11 COMPETITION

12 RACE PREVIEWS


ITALIAN GRAND PRIX

Lotus F1 Team fought back from a disappointing qualifying session to show strong race pace, finishing the Italian Grand Prix, on Sunday September 8th, in eighth and eleventh positions. After an eventful first corner, Kimi Räikkönen pitted for a new front nose cone and tyres whilst Romain Grosjean continued despite a rear-end onslaught from another car. Following his first lap pit stop, Kimi was the second fastest car through the race, with a determined drive including multiple fastest laps. Kimi eventually finished in eleventh, hounding the McLaren of Jenson Button ahead, whilst Romain finished in eighth place, withstanding considerable pressure from Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes behind

Kimi Räikkönen 11th Romain Grosjean 8th

SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX

Despite suffering with back pain, Kimi Räikkönen managed to drive to a superb third position in the Singapore Grand Prix. Romain Grosjean meanwhile felt pain of a different kind after a forced retirement whilst battling for his own potential podium finish. Both drivers put in fantastic performances around the tight confines of the Marina Bay Street Circuit; one of the most gruelling races of the season..

Kimi Räikkönen 3rd Romain Grosjean Retired

The number of individual parts that make up each Lotus E21 Formula One Car.

The number of aero parts tested annually in the wind tunnel.

The amount of man hours that have gone into the design of the E21.

How many seconds it takes for the E21 to reach 200 km/h from standstill.

30K

10K

250K

4.9

“WE WILL FIGHT FOR PODIUMS FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR I’M SURE”Eric Boullier, Team Principal

“WHEN I LOST THE FRONT WING I HAD TO COME IN AND CHANGE TO A NEW ONE MEANING AN EXTRA PIT STOP WHICH WE HADN’T PLANNED. IT’S NOT JUST THE TIME IN THE PITS, BUT YOU HAVE TO WORK YOUR WAY THROUGH THE FIELD AFTERWARDS.” KIMI RAIKKONEN

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CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENTWatch the video >>


CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT

Discover how Lotus F1 Team tackle the challenges of continuous dual development – improving the 2013 car and building the 2014 machine – and how Avanade is helping to get the job done.

With so many drawings generated by the design office – 20,000 per car, from the first sketch to the final race of the season - and two completely different sets of design philosophies to be guided [2013 versus 2014], it’s a challenge to juggle these projects and ensure that everyone is working to maximum efficiency.

Click above to watch!

CONTINUOUS DUAL DEVELOPMENTHOW TO JUGGLEPhil Adey, Lotus F1 Team’s Design Office Manager, talks Data Driven through the challenges of dual development – improving the 2013 car and building the 2014 machine – and how Avanade is helping to get the job done.

BUSINESS PROBLEMThe Lotus F1 Team E21 race car that will line up on the grid in Brazil this year in November, the last race, is basically a completely different car to the E21 that kicked off the season in January. The engineering challenge the team undertakes is to make improvements every 20 minutes over the course of the season in order to match – and ideally overtake - the pace of development of the other top teams. In Formula One, if you stand still you go backwards.

But building this year’s car is only half of the battle, for there is also next year’s car which must be planned for and created. Once the new season starts, half of the design team immediately turns its attention to the following year. Alongside its development of the current car, it has to craft an all-new one with an eye to the future and, in the case of 2014, an all-new powertrain and different rules and regulations by which to abide.

With so many drawings generated by the design office – 20,000 per car, from the first sketch to the final race of the season - and two completely different sets of design philosophies to be guided [2013 versus 2014], it’s a challenge to juggle these projects and ensure that everyone is working to maximum efficiency, meeting each deadline and never making a backwards step. Clear targets, and optimizing resources – people, technology, budgets – is critical, as is organization, so as not to drop the ball.

Next year, F1 switches from 2.4 liter normally aspirated V8 engines to 1.6 liter turbocharged V6s, more powerful hybrid systems, and other such changes under the carbon-fiber skin. It mirrors the motor industry at large, turning to more fuel efficient technologies. It’s nothing short of a revolution.

“There has been a significant increase in workload in terms of the engine system packaging; cooling, exhaust, hydraulics,” explains Phil Adey. “Usually from one car to another there’s 10-20 percent carryover, as in reusing parts from the previous year. That’s not happening this year. With 2014, it’s single digit carryover. We don’t have any more designers or resources so we need to fit a lot more work into the same amount of time, to get a competitive car ready for January.” >

DRIVERS CHAMPIONSHIP

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CONTINUOUS DUAL DEVELOPMENT CONTINUED...

AVANADE SOLUTION Avanade has provided Lotus F1 Team with new software designed to save time, aid the supply chain, improve work flow and agility, and make this dual development a more manageable task with optimal results.

“The main bottle-neck is always the design release into manufacturing and making sure that is as efficient as possible. In terms of the numbers of designs being released, it’s not hundreds or thousands, it’s tens of thousands of designs throughout the year. Hundreds every day. We want that process to be slick and concise so that it doesn’t take design resource, and it’s in this capacity that I have been working with Avanade mostly,” explains Adey.

Since the middle of the summer, the priority has shifted steadily from ’13 to ’14, though there’s still an enormous amount of attention needed on both projects. The Avanade planning tools enable this to happen most efficiently.

“It is relentless,” declares Adey. “We’re solving reliability issues between races, which are sure to increase next year due to the novelty of the systems, and we have the aerodynamic program on-going that overlays with the continuous requirement to develop the car. And then, on the other side, there’s the completely separate 2014 project. Next year will also be a challenge, as there will be more races and, as I say, more issues to resolve. Avanade is facilitating this by taking away possible interruptions in the release mechanism. Any interruption when you are on such tight deadlines and with such a large amount of data being processed, can severely disrupt your race-by-race progress.”

RESULTS REALIZED “The release mechanisms are a lot more efficient now than before Avanade joined us. It’s a much quicker, slicker process, which in turn affords us more time to get the final design right,” explains Adey.

There are two Avanade consultants embedded in the Lotus F1 Team design office, and their task is to ensure the designers get what they need, to become measurably more productive without any increase in headcount and resources.

“Avanade’s guys got up to speed extremely quickly, it was seamless. They are not only developers but they also test the product before it goes live, and their high standards have ensured we have better systems with no bugs. There is a continuous loop where the Avanade consultants are working very much integrated with the team here to make sure the demands are clearly understood and that the deliverables are correct.”

With the roll out of the 2014 car nearing and work 75 percent completed, thoughts are already turning to 2015. “We will need to start designing it in late spring 2014, in order to make the deadlines. And so again you have that cycle where you will be developing a 2015 car whilst the 2014 car is still in its infancy, which will be more acute next year than any year before. So next year, like this year, will be a massive dual development operation.”

“No other sport has this continuous development, it creates very special requirements. It’s unlike any other industry, but the experiences learnt here can, I’m sure, be applied to other businesses where two or more different products are being designed and manufactured at the same time and with limited resources.”

THE PRIORITY HAS SHIFTED STEADILY FROM ’13 TO ’14, THOUGH THERE’S STILL AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF ATTENTION NEEDED ON BOTH PROJECTS. THE AVANADE PLANNING TOOLS ENABLE THIS TO HAPPEN MOST EFFICIENTLY.

“NO OTHER SPORT HAS THIS CONTINUOUS

DEVELOPMENT, IT CREATES VERY

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS.”Phil Adey

Lotus F1 Team’s Drawing Office Manager

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FOCUS IN: BUSINESS PRACTICESWORK REDESIGNED – AT 200MPHPerformance requires more than just technology. While science and engineering drive Lotus F1 Team, enabling them to construct and manage faster racing cars, it’s how they use these resources and others in smart and efficient ways that wins the magnums of champagne on the rostrum; and, perhaps more saliently, makes them successful in business as well as sport.

With such huge goal-oriented pressure, almost unbelievable time-to-market requirements, non-negotiable rules and regulations, and financial realities, Formula One teams are extreme examples of businesses at the sharp end. Yet, the same underlying principles - addressing changing customer needs, shifts in the competitive landscape, regulatory changes or reduced budgets - affect millions of other enterprises.

The key in any challenging environment, not least in Formula One, is to be able to do more with less. Together, Lotus F1 Team and Avanade reviewed existing critical work streams for ways to improve productivity without adding more processes, people or technology to the mix. For any business, efficiencies don’t really need to be created – they need to be found.

For some businesses today – from airlines, to grocery stores to banks – enterprise mobility and the rise of “Bring Your Own Device” is a great example of this. A growing number of employees are bringing their personal devices into the workplace and using them for business purposes. In fact, Avanade’s own research showed six in 10 employees now bring their consumer devices to work. Organizations have an opportunity to harness those devices to enable greater productivity, collaboration and information sharing – but they have to recognize consumer devices as an opportunity for efficiency, not a threat or risk.

With 19 races a season, crews communicating between the race track and their factory, and two cars lapping at incredible speeds, you don’t get more mobile than F1. Added to that, this is a 24/7 culture where you’re always on call and rarely off the clock. No one gets to the pinnacle of world motorsport with a 9-to-5 philosophy.

New mobile technologies like tablets are driving fundamental changes in how work gets done. The most progressive businesses are building entirely new processes to better empower their people and tap into

innovative technologies. Avanade’s research on this trend – called Work Redesigned – show that 70 percent of businesses said they have changed at least one business process to better leverage mobile devices and other consumer technologies to their company’s benefit.

Those companies, like Lotus F1 Team, that are redesigning their processes and policies are seeing surprising impact in growth, product development, employee satisfaction and collaboration. Avanade are helping Lotus F1 Team to find ways to drive process improvements and provide them with the right tools and information. As an example, Avanade has optimized the team’s admin systems and processes so that designers spend more time designing and less time filling out paperwork.

As a result of workflow improvements, Lotus F1 Team’s designers have got back the equivalent of a full time designer in reduced administrative overhead and can now focus their efforts more efficiently with better tools to design a more competitive race car, for both this year and next.

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KOREAN GP

RACE DATE: 6 OCTOBER

CIRCUIT NAME: KOREA INTERNATIONAL CIRCUIT

With unpredictable weather conditions and long straights designed to encourage overtaking, the racing at the Korean Grand Prix can be spicier than a plate of kimchi. The colourless landscape and empty seats means that it doesn’t look like the most exciting venue at first glance, but the drivers love the challenge of this track.

Round 14 of the Formula One season is located in Yeongam, 400km south of Korea’s capital, Seoul. Set-up characteristics are a little like the Hockenheim track, in Germany; aerodynamics are a compromise between the straights and sweeping curves at the beginning of the lap and the tight, twisty stuff at the end, so the engineers have to find a good balance.

The Lotus F1 Team crossed the line in fifth and seventh last year.

JAPANESE GP


CIRCUIT NAME: SUZUKA

The Japanese adore F1. Scores of supporters line the circuit entrance hoping to catch a glimpse of their heroes.

Suzuka is a truly technical circuit with a lot of character and features some wonderfully rewarding corners. Ask a driver to name his favourite circuit, and he’ll either say Spa, in Belgium, or Suzuka.

There’s a mix of high and low speed corners and, at the beginning of the lap, with so many fast direction changes and challenging cambers, it’s all about getting in a rhythm. Teams will avoid putting on too much wing because they don’t want to compromise top speed, which should reach 315km/h. The best set-up is one which allows slow corner traction, grip round the quickest bends, and enable fast changes of direction without eating the tyres.

Kimi Raikkonen delivered one of the finest performances in F1 history here in 2005 when he raced from 17th on the grid to take the lead on the final lap.

INDIAN GP


CIRCUIT NAME: BUDDH INTERNATIONAL CIRCUIT

Formula One is growing in popularity in India. They’ve already produced two F1 drivers and for the past couple of years have had their own grand prix circuit in Greater Noida, an hour south east of New Delhi.

This is a high-speed circuit with plenty of elevations. In fact, it’s the second fastest track on the calendar after Monza, Italy. This means teams try to cut down on drag in order to hit top speeds of 320km/h.

Lotus F1 Team got both cars in the top ten last year, with Kimi finishing seventh and Romain ninth.

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data driven with lotus f1 - september 2013

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