Let’s talk about some of the trends and challenges faced by the automotive industry in their design release processes
Speaker notes:
Stricter and tougher fuel economy and emissions regulations are driving an unprecedented rate of change for automakers and suppliers in developing more efficient powertrains and vehicles. Companies are pursuing new powertrain technologies such as electrification, improving the internal combustion engine and transmissions as well as other improvements in driveline components. Vehicle teams collaborate closely with powertrain engineers to lessen the energy demands throughout the vehicle including light-weighting, improved aerodynamics and other elements.
The industry continues to push for performance not only to be the best in class, but also to define brand differentiation and character. This is critical in defining best in class products.
The push to achieve the balance of performance and cost is driving significant investments in systems engineering and optimization. The complexity of control systems has increased rapidly in response to the new types of powertrain and chassis actuators. These are fundamental breakthroughs in reducing losses and waste energy recovery technologies.
Speaker notes:
Reduction in weight will be a challenge that is given to all parts of the vehicle. Suppliers will be asked to reduce weight of components, even those that have performed well in the past. The challenges of light-weighting will require that suppliers push to optimize their structural designs through weight reduction by a combination of redesign and introduction of new materials. Alternative propulsion and energy optimization requires new technologies to develop and tough engineering problems to solve, not only by their automakers but by the suppliers as well. System complexity has risen significantly with the level of vehicle system interactions and in turn drives further product and process complexity. Suppliers must still deliver flawless product performance for new products and technologies that do not have a performance history. These new designs just by their nature carry more risk in terms of executing to timelines & milestones, cost, and quality targets - not only for the program execution but also the value recovery by the supplier for the investment made.
Speaker notes:
To address these trends and new innovation focus areas that require greater system and an increased number of product variations and configurations to be engineered and manufactured around the world, it is important to ensure the extended team can collaborate across the vehicle and system disciplines and leverage a product development environment that can bring together the different design domains in a unified development environment. Making this full context or complete product definition available to all the members of the distributed team allows them to design their products effectively while ensuring they do not compromise the overall performance of the final vehicle. By eliminating silo’s of information, you can capture, manage and share the part designs and knowledge required for each person and domain involved in the development of the product.
To enalbe Global collaboration for complex, customized machines, you need PDM
Let’s talk about what we mean by PDM.
Managing today’s products is not as simple as keeping track of your design data.
<BUILD>Other information, such as documentation, supplier data, manufacturing information, customer requirement and more all have an impact on what an engineer needs to do.
<BUILD>In many cases, engineers find themselves searching through irrelevant information to find the design data they need to work on.
<BUILD>And once they find something, often times is out of date or obsolete <BUILD>
<BUILD> They often struggle to figure out how it got to this point (why was this piece added?)
And where exactly it needs to go from here.
PDM can help.
With PDM, engineers can quickly and easily find exactly what they are looking for.
Once you find what you need, you can understand the context of what you’re working on – without wading through irrelevant information.
And PDM provides process management capabilities that help you understand the history of what you’re working on, and what to do with it to move forward.
One of the most common questions we hear when we talk about PDM is “Do I have to use my CAD vendor’s PDM software”
The answer is no. With PDM capabilities from Teamcenter, you can manage any CAD data across all domains, regardless of vendor. We have an open strategy - providing out of the box integrations to leading CAD tools. Users have key capabilities that can be executed without ever leaving the design tool:
Search
Open Check In/Out
Update (fast changes) to part, asm, drawing
Save
One of the benefits of managing CAD data in Teamcenter is to take advantage of JT. JT is a common, open, and published lightweight 3D representation of your CAD data. JT files can be automatically generated, then used to easily communicate, collaborate, and share information both internally and with your external partners and suppliers. It is an open standard that has been accepted by ISO as a publicly available specification.
Through our CAD management functionality and JT viewer capabilities, we are able to provide true Multi-CAD data management. We understand that a product may have different sources across many domains – some parts developed internally, others through suppliers, etc. With multi-CAD data management, you can manage a single product with components originating in multiple CAD systems.
<NOTE: You should click on the CAD system that your customer is most interested in – it will launch the video for that CAD integration. The script is the same, regardless of CAD system>
Whether your business requires data management for a single CAD system, or management of CAD data from multiple systems, Teamcenter provides a single secure source for all CAD data. With integrations for NX, CATIA, ProE, Solid Edge, Solidworks, Inventor, AutoCAD and many others, you can empower your designers to spend their time working on design – not tracking down the latest drawing or file. They can continue working in their native CAD system with Teamcenter managing data and processes behind the scenes. Designers can easily locate a part or assembly – enabling re-use and ensuring users are working with the latest design. Once located, data can be opened and edited in the native CAD tool. In this example, the designer is making a simple change to a snow blower sub-assembly. Once complete, the item is saved back to Teamcenter – using version and revision rules that can be configured to match your business process. In this example, industry standard CAD neutral files, JT, are generated upon checkin.
JT files can be used to easily communicate, collaborate and share information both internally and with your external partners and suppliers. In this example, we now see that the designer was working with a sub-assembly of a large snow blower. Users can browse through the Bill of Material – loading the entire assembly, or only those components they’re interested in. This snow blower was created in 7 different CAD systems, but the user is able to visualize all the components together – regardless of their source. This virtual product can be viewed, interrogate, and marked-up by widely dispersed participants across the product lifecycle. You don’t have to be a CAD designer to use it.
From basic markups, to more advanced analysis, Teamcenter provides very robust digital mock-up and validation capabilities. Here we’ve generated a report to visually highlight the native CAD system for each sub-assembly. Color reports can also be used to highlight the release status of each assembly, the supplier each item comes from, effectivity dates and more. Flexible reporting capabilities enable you to easily understand and communicate important information.
With capabilities such as process simulation, path planning, space claim and clearance analysis that you see here, you can support accurate analysis across the product lifecycle. In this example, we are checking for any clearance issues near the blade. We can step through all the found issues and interrogate for additional information where needed. These are just a few examples of some of the powerful view and analysis capabilities available with JT and CAD data management in Teamcenter.
<NOTE: This video will illustrate the ability to open the entire multi-CAD assembly in a single CAD environment. This has been recorded in NX, ProE, or CATIA. Select the CAD system your customer would be most interested in to launch the appropriate video.>
With Teamcenter, design teams don’t have to migrate parts to another CAD system to work with them. Through our CAD management functionality and JT viewer capabilities, we are able to provide true Multi-CAD data management. A designer can open non-native parts and assemblies into their CAD environment to perform in context design activities. In this example, you can see the entire snow blower assembly in a single CAD environment – without any translation or migration of non-native assemblies. A designer can open the sub-assemblies they need, position and mate data from different systems, or make changes to the parts and assemblies themselves, then and save it all back to Teamcenter.
With PDM powered by Teamcenter, you can easily find, re-use and share accurate CAD data.
With our open approach to managing any CAD data in a single system, design data is easy to find and use, regardless of the CAD system it came from. No more broken file systems links, no more finding a file that somebody else copied offline and made changes to. With CAD Management in Teamcenter, you’ll be able to find and use data quickly easily.
With our open, lightweight, and flexible JT file format, everybody understand what the product looks like both inside your organization and with suppliers or partners. It will make it easier to collaborate and help eliminate confusion and errors.
With Multi-CAD data management, data from multiple sources is shared seamlessly across the product. Users can easily work with data, no matter where it was authored.
Another question we hear a lot is, “How do I know when it’s done”?
Teamcenter enables you to digitize, optimize, and standardize your release process(es).
We help you track a clear status for parts, sub-assemblies, assemblies, products etc. This keeps everybody on the same page – so there is no confusion weather a part is frozen, released to tooling, released to manufacturing, In Production, etc.
You can automate simple processes, with only a few steps as well as more complex workflows that might include parallel tracks, decisions steps, sub-processes, rejection paths, as well as standard or custom handlers that let’s the system automatically execute behind the scenes.
All workflows in Teamcenter enable you to build in your business logic. In addition, complete audit and history capabilities not only support regulatory requirements, but also help you optimize your processes – by identifying bottlenecks, etc.
With product data management in Teamcenter, every item – from parts and assemblies to documents and processes have a clear release status. Here we can see the release status for all the sub-assemblies of this snow blower. Let’s take one of the prototype parts – and release it to manufacturing.
Teamcenter enables you to digitize, optimize, and standardize YOUR release process(es). In this example, we’ve created a simple process that will route the assembly and all associated documentation for review, then automatically update the status, and send a notification that requires manufacturing acknowledgment. You can model the release process to meet your business requirements.
As the sub-assembly and related documentation move through the process, each user is presented with the information they need to complete their task. They can click on any of the related items to get more details. A signoff history is part of the complete audit and history capability that support regulatory requirements and help you optimize your processes.
Once the review is complete, the sub-assembly and associated documentation are updated behind the scenes to reflect the new status. When manufacturing receives their notification, they can see all the released data and click on any of the associated items for more details. In this example, all that is required of manufacturing is an acknowledgement.
You can digitize, optimize, and standardize your release processes. With PDM powered by Teamcenter:
Product, assembly, and part status is clearly indicated – eliminating confusion and re-work.
Workflows deliver everything you need to get your job done – nothing more, nothing less.
With the flexibility to manage simple and complex projects effectively, projects are completed on time, without the last minute scramble to get things done.
Automotive suppliers must collaborate effectively in all stages of a program to avoid absorbing costs associated with fixing last-minute launch or warranty problems. This becomes especially important as you are faced with managing an ever-increasing number of programs. Greater visibility and transparency into program execution enables better collaboration across the engineering domains and value chain.
<click> With PDM, engineers can quickly and easily find what they need, understand the context of the information and figure out what to do with it.
<click> You can manage any CAD data across all domains, regardless of vendor. JT files allow you to easily communicate, collaborate, and share information both internally and with your external partners and suppliers.
<click> Teamcenter enables you to digitize, optimize, and standardize your release process(es). We help you track a clear status for parts, sub-assemblies, assemblies, products – any data that Teamcenter manages. You can also standardize your release process – regardless of how simple or complex it is.
Design Release Management … a solution that enables you to better manage and leverage one of your most critical assets … your design data…across a global value chain.
