Zol Cendes Entrepreneurship and Software

I CONTINUOUS MPROVEMENT KAIZENNewsletter of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship at Rockford University Editor: Stephen Hicks, Ph.D. Designer: Christopher Vaughan ISSUE 29 FEBRUARy 2014 FEATURE Zol Cendes Entrepreneurship and Software Kaizen: You were a founder and chair- use in their own design process. I started ALSO INSIDE: man of Ansoft, whose mission is developing Ansoft Corporation with the initial fund- software? ing from Alcoa, developed our first software Essay Contest Winners Cendes: That’s correct. In 1984 I was a program to simulate the electromagnetic professor at Carnegie Mellon University casting of aluminum ingots. In subsequent Guest Speaker John Chisholm (CMU) performing research in computer years we expanded our simulation capabili- simulation technology. I was approached ties to address thousands of other products Guest Speaker Robert Lawson by a member of the research staff at Alcoa in electrical and computer engineering to develop a computer program to model and grew Ansoft to a company worth $900 electromagnetic casting. At the time, mol- million. INTRODUCTION: ten aluminum was poured through mold Kaizen: Ansoft is now part of ANSYS, a $7 Dr. Zoltan Cendes was the co-founder, chairman and cooled to form ingots. Alcoa wanted billion corporation, but it’s not a company and chief technology officer of Ansoft Corporation, to develop a process where the aluminum that most of us know about. What does it do? now part of ANSYS. Prior to founding Ansoft, Mr. was supported through the molten column Cendes received his undergraduate degree at the Uni- Cendes: ANSYS is the leading company versity of Michigan and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees by an electromagnetic field rather than by in the engineering simulation market. It de- from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He a mold. In this way, the aluminum would velops software used by engineers as an aid was then an engineer with General Electric in Sche- form better ingots since it was cooled to design and development better products. nectady, New York, associate professor of engineering at without touching it. I proposed to Alcoa Consider the cell phone in your pocket. McGill, and professor at Carnegie Mellon University that I recruit a graduate student to perform There are literally billions of components in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For his achievements in research in this area. Alcoa replied that they in this cell phone. It is impossible for any- developing software tools for electromagnetic analysis didn’t want to fund research—they wanted one to understand all of the interactions and design, he received the Antennas and Propagation me to start a company and develop a com- Society Distinguished Achievement Award. mercial software program that they could CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 KAIZEN 22014 ZOL CENDES CONTINUED by physics and as an undergraduate drifted between taking engineering courses and physics courses. I actually began my Mas- among these components without using ter’s study in the physics department at simulation software. Or consider the car McGill University but was assigned a bor- you drive. Engineers use simulation soft- ing Master’s project. Looking around, I ware to determine the mechanical integ- discovered groundbreaking research being rity of the components, the efficiency of performed by Professor Peter Silvester in the combustion in the cylinders, the forces the Electrical Engineering Department at due to airflow around the car, the interac- McGill. Professor Silvester’s work was cut- From the Executive Director tions of the electrical components in the ting edge. I switched departments to Elec- A study shows that Stanford Univer- car, and thousands of other concerns. trical Engineering and never looked back. sity alumni create nearly $3 trillion in Fifty years ago, products were designed by economic impact each year, and com- Kaizen: What were you thinking your trial and error—engineers and designers panies founded have created 5.4 mil- likely career path would be? would build a prototype of the product lion jobs. Stanford stands as a model Cendes: As a youth, I did not know what of how first-rate research and teach- and test it to see if it worked. Today, simu- ing can have win-win impact on the lation driven product development is the my career path would be except that it larger world outside the academy. norm; most of the products you buy and would involve understanding how the world works. Once I encountered Profes- So it is appropriate that our feature use today—from computers to airplanes to sor Silvester, I fixed my chosen area of interview is with former academic medical devices—are designed using engi- Zoltan Cendes. Mr. Cendes was a neering simulation software. study and supposed I’d be an academic the rest of my life. faculty member at McGill and Carne- Kaizen: Where did you grow up? gie-Mellon before leaving to start an Kaizen: You then got master’s and doc- Cendes: My background is diverse. I was enormously-successful engineering toral degrees in electrical engineering born in a Displaced Person’s Camp in Aus- software company. I spoke with Mr. from McGill. What was the focus of your tria of Hungarian parents. We immigrated Cendes in Naples, Florida, about his doctoral work? life and career, which began in Hun- to Canada when I was three. We were de- Cendes: My thesis advisor, Professor Sil- gary, involved time at a war-refugee posited on a farm in October in the mid- camp in Austria and hardship growing dle nowhere with no money, no food, no vester, was a pioneer in applying computer up in Canada, before he achieved ac- car, or anything. My father, who had two methods to simulate electromagnetic fields. ademic and entrepreneurial success. Ph.D. degrees but spoke no English, found Let me begin by saying that electromag- In this issue of Kaizen, we also report a job in a automobile parts factory where netic fields are one of the most fundamen- on guest speakers John Chisholm he worked for several years. I grew up very tal quantities in nature. There are only four and Robert Lawson, who visited us poor with periods of hunger and depriva- known forces in the universe—gravity, from San Francisco and Dallas, re- tion. However, I always knew that life was electromagnetics, and the strong and the spectively, and the excellent work of full of possibilities. My father eventually weak nuclear forces. Electromagnetic fields two students in the Business and Eco- became a Math Professor, first in Canada are at the heart of all electrical engineer- nomic Ethics course—Amour Muro and then in the USA at Central Michigan ing and, indeed, much of your life. The and Alex Patnou. University. My desire for learning was fos- equations describing electromagnetic fields All of our previous issues of Kaizen tered by my parents who understood the were discovered by James Clerk Maxwell are available there featuring our importance of intellectual achievement. in 1864 and describe macroscopic electro- news and extended interviews with magnetic phenomena perfectly and com- Kaizen: Were you technically-oriented as entrepreneurs in a wide variety of pletely. However, these equations are very a youth? exciting fields—from architecture to difficult to solve except in the simplest of technology to marketing to venture Cendes: Yes. One of my earliest memo- circumstances. My doctoral thesis was to capital to sports and more. Please ries is drawing pictures of rockets going to solve Maxwell’s equations in more com- feel welcome to visit us online at the moon when I was perhaps four years www.EthicsandEntrepreneurship.org. plex, real-life cases using a new computer old. Growing up I loved to read books simulation technique called the finite ele- about rockets and all things scientific. I ment method. loved to build things with my Erector set, Kaizen: After that you became a professor? and built a telescope and electrical devices as a teenager. I was always fascinated by Cendes: No, I first went to work at the the world, wanted to understand it, and General Electric Company in Schenectady, dreamed of inventing something that New York, first in the Large Steam-Tur- would change the world. bine Generator Division and then in the GE Corporate Research and Develop- Kaizen: What led you to choose engi- Stephen Hicks, Ph.D. ment Center. At GE, I developed com- neering as your undergraduate major? puter programs to simulate the behavior Cendes: My path to engineering was not of electric power transformers and genera- a straight line. As a youth, I was fascinated 2 tors. Using the finite element method to compute the electromagnetic fields inside transformers and generators provides a much higher level of knowledge about transformer or generator performance CEE NEWS than can be obtained by measurements alone. CEE Essay Contest Winners: At one point, I received a letter from the Vice President of GE’s Transformer Divi- sion stating that by designing more effi- cient transformers our software simulations had saved the company over one million dollars during the past year. Kaizen: What motivated you to leave GE and become a professor? Cendes: Professor Silvester asked me to return to McGill as a professor. The offer was very appealing because being a professor is much more entrepreneurial than working in a large corporation. While GE Amour Muro Alex Patnou was an excellent place to work, it still had Students in the Business and Economic Ethics course wrote on the topic: What does success in a large bureaucracy. A good professor is business require? a mini-CEO—he is self-starting, sets his The essays were judged on their accuracy and depth of interpretation as well as their independence own direction, assembles a team of stu- of thought.

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