MathWorks: Accelerating Engineering-Driven Analytics

The growing use of smart technologies including IoT and sensors is transforming the manufacturing industry globally. With proper tools and techniques, data from connected devices can be used to develop and incorporate more intelligence into products, services, and processes. A company which supports these needs and ••offers a high-performance environment for working with big data is MathWorks.

MathWorks is the leading developer of mathematical computing software MATLAB and Simulink. MATLAB, the language of technical computing, is a programming environment for algorithm development, data analysis, visualization, and numeric computation. Simulink is a graphical environment for simulation and Model-Based Design for multidomain dynamic and embedded systems.

Engineers and scientists worldwide rely on these product families to accelerate the pace of discovery, innovation, and development in automotive, aerospace, electronics, financial services, biotech-pharmaceutical, and other industries. MATLAB and Simulink are also fundamental teaching and research tools used in global universities and learning institutions. Founded in 1984, MathWorks employs more than 3500 people in 15 countries, with headquarters in Natick, Massachusetts, USA.

Highly Dedicated to the Data Science Industry

MathWorks supports its customers to enhance their technology offerings. A key area MathWorks focuses on is helping create the next generation of digitally-aware and skilled engineers. The company's approach is to push for project-based learning in the classroom and through student competitions. Project-based learning allows students to see, hear and touch what would otherwise be completely abstract or theoretical teaching. It gives them a better idea of what a career in STEM might entail on a day-to-day basis.

The company's mission spans across four key areas in delivering these objectives:

•  Technology: The goal is to change the world by accelerating the pace of discovery, innovation, development, and learning in engineering and science. The company organizes MATLAB EXPO every year to drive these initiatives. The upcoming expo is going to be held in April 2018 in Bangalore, Pune, and Hyderabad.

•  Business: MathWorks strive to be the leading worldwide developer and supplier of technical computing software.

•  Human: The company cultivates an enjoyable, vibrant, participatory, and rational work environment that nurtures individual growth, empowerment, and responsibility; appreciates diversity; encourages initiative and creativity; values teamwork; shares success; and rewards excellence.

•  Social: MathWorks actively support its local and professional communities through initiatives that advance STEM education, foster staff volunteerism, build environmental sustainability, and aid global relief efforts.

A Veteran Leader

Sunil Motwani is the Industry Director at MathWorks India office and manages sales for commercial customers in the country. He has been at MathWorks since 2008 from the time it started operations in India. Prior to joining MathWorks, Sunil worked at Hewlett Packard & Agilent Technologies managing sales of test instruments for various industry segments in India including Aerospace & Defense, Communications, Semiconductor, Automotive and Industrial Automation.

Sunil has over 25 years of experience in sales of technology products across various regions within India having been based at Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad & Bangalore during this time. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Electronics Engineering from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT), Nagpur and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Software Technology from National Centre of Software Technology (NCST), Mumbai.

Sunil has been responsible for building market expansion strategies, partnerships, domain expertise and engineering capabilities across the MathWorks' operations in India. He sees a huge potential emerging in the market for engineering data analytics that drives applications like predictive/prescriptive analytics, fleet analytics, autonomous systems (automated driving, UAVs, Robotics), IoT etc. "Data science platforms like MATLAB make it possible for the engineering teams that develop and maintain the equipment to leverage their wealth of knowledge about how the equipment should operate. This idea of empowering the engineers, or domain expert with right data science tools, is often more appealing than hiring data scientists who have little knowledge of how the equipment operates", he says.

Bridging the Gap Between Data and Insights

Engineering and IT teams are using MATLAB to build today's advanced big data analytics, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, IoT, and Robotics systems. MATLAB provides a wide variety of ways to access data from various sources, including business data from databases, data warehouses, and Hadoop, to engineering data from sensors, data historians, and industry-specific protocols.

MathWorks has a large focus on making the tools used by data scientists available to the domain experts. The company delivers this by providing easy-to-use functions and apps for machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, signal processing, numerical optimization, and other advanced analytics technologies. Moreover, MATLAB provides deployment paths for running analytics on embedded devices as well as IT infrastructure and clouds. The offering of multiple deployment paths continues to gain importance as the trends in IoT causes teams to re-think whether processing should be conducted on embedded devices at "the edge", in "the cloud", or in a hybrid manner.

A New Era of Innovation

MathWorks delivers solutions that drive innovation and enhanced learning. Innovation at MathWorks is driven by engineers, scientists, researchers, and students across the world. The company provides solutions that allow them to focus on their core interest areas and roles, by relying on MATLAB and Simulink. These offer a professionally built environment, with interactive apps and additive products, that has the ability to scale to meet design and development needs. In support of this, the company offers MathWorks Connections Program. The program includes products and services that complement MATLAB and Simulink and spans over 500 Complementary Third-Party Solutions. These range from software and hardware products to training, consulting, and system integration services.

Converting Hurdles into Opportunities

MathWorks categorizes the challenges faced by the company into two categories:

Business / Revenue Growth – The growth of digitization and customer-savvy users is driving industries to constantly innovate their products and solutions. This, in turn, puts the pressure on companies like MathWorks to constantly add capabilities and features. While this can be a challenge, MathWorks has the unique advantage of its tools being used ubiquitously across various industries. This allows the company to stay at the forefront of trends in one industry that it can then extend to another.

Products – MATLAB and Simulink are used extensively for the design & development of high criticality systems. As a result, it becomes important for MathWorks to manage the quality of its software. Instead of pushing patches and updates to products on an ad-hoc basis, the company focuses on quality by building a clear roadmap of major & incremental improvements in its tools. This allows MathWorks to manage customer expectations and provide tools that meet their needs in terms of capability and quality, through regular product releases that are typically scheduled in March & October every year. The other benefit of this timed-release approach is that it allows the company to track industry trends and build support for engineering and scientific needs into its tools in a focused and sustained manner.

Looking Towards the Future

MathWorks foresees engineers will be challenged to build confidence in using new methods and tools to overcome an ever-increasing amount of data and the growing complexity of software. While teams working in disruptive technologies can successfully mine data to build intelligent systems, a select few are beginning to see the advantages of adopting workflows derived from a common software environment that incorporates data science tools and techniques with physics-based simulation models.

Going ahead, technologies like "Digital Twins" should see the emergence of techniques that would involve using data analytics along with physics-based modeling & simulation for the advancement in the management of high-value assets. With rapid advancements in industries and applications, more and more companies are relying on employees who blend together physical and digital engineering disciplines with a clear aptitude to work in their specific industry. This has changed how companies approach to team building and job roles, which in turn is impacting the skills needed by the future workforce.