Finding the right tool for your automotive design needs

By: Kathryn Gerardino-Elagio

ASEAN is positioned to be the hotspot for global automotive manufacturing. The rising number of OEMs operating in the region has played an essential role in driving demand in the automotive industry. Thailand is the most favourable market as they have the ecosystem; followed by Indonesia, where there is particular demand for locally-produced low and middle-capacity cars. Next is Vietnam where the automobile industry is poised to grow significantly - driven by rising domestic demand and tax reforms implemented proactively by the government.

However, Thailand's automotive industry suffered in 2014 largely on the back of the prolonged political crisis, which hurt business and consumer confidence. Indonesia has been a beneficiary of this uncertainty; it was set to benefit from car manufacturing companies looking to diversify their operations away from Thailand. Meanwhile, Vietnam is most likely to have an overall positive impact on sales in the country, considering the aforementioned factors that are poised to drive Vietnam’s automobile industry.

Despite Thailand's current political and economic uncertainty, some automakers are choosing to ride out the slump in Thailand as they still see a long-term growth potential in Southeast Asia's second largest economy. As a result, Thailand’s automotive sector needs to get its house in order. While other low margin industries have refined processes and technologies to improve profitability and manage cycles and complexity -- the automotive industry remains stuck in a backwards thinking mind-set and old paradigms.

Many companies have warmed to the idea of outsourcing lightweight tasks such as software testing and data backup, but few are willing to trust a third party with vital jobs that could pose serious financial risk if they aren't performed properly.

The story of Daimler Mercedes holds an important lesson for how large businesses can allay some of those fears. Changing CAD systems is a huge undertaking for a company of Daimler’s magnitude. It’s not every day an OEM with more than 6,000 users migrates to a new CAD solution -- there are plenty of risks involved.

New way of doing things

Big OEM's don't change their enterprise CAD systems daily, so it was a huge deal when Daimler Mercedes moved to Siemens PLM Software’s NX. According to Professor Alfred Katzenbach, former IT Management responsible at Mercedes-Benz R&D department, the change has proven to be worth the effort.

The decision to consider other CAD systems started when Daimler upgraded their existing software version. The company decided that when the next opportunity presented itself—in other words, at the next version upgrade—they would look for and select the best CAD solution for the company.

“Daimler chose [NX] because it can do the job most effectively,” Siemens PLM CEO Chuck Grindstaff said. “The capabilities of NX met their needs, having the ability to integrate with Teamcenter and the future vision that we have. Really, all of these three things made the difference.”

Katzenbach said in an exclusive interview with ENGINEERING.com, “When we started this project our intention was to begin with the first new car line in 2015. Now, if we had done things as we did in the past–starting with a new program and keeping the old program alive–it would have led to a transition period stretching to 2028-2030.”

Daimler changed its philosophy and created completely new ways of doing things. They selected 250 different business cases. For each of them the company worked out the methodology required, based on their established production. Daimler even produced videos and placed these in a reference library accessible to users.

While there have been some challenges in the upgrading process, Professor Katzenbach assures us that a project of this size will always have its difficulties, even if you stay with the same CAD solution and change versions. Furthermore, the difficulties Daimler ran into were mainly ones of culture: It’s human nature to resist change, and there are always some late adopters.

Thailand: Thinking Big

Lower manufacturing costs; government-sponsored tax incentives; and a reliable, hard-working labour pool may have been the winning combination in luring the first industrial and high-tech manufacturers to Thailand a few decades ago. But that's not what will keep Thailand's throne neither as the Detroit of Southeast Asia nor to draw back future investors.

In an industry and market where many new players are emerging, more mature manufacturing hubs such as Sammitr Motors Manufacturing Public Company Limited - who marched the path towards integrated manufacturing - are following the footsteps of Daimler in taking a huge leap and changing their CAD system and becoming more competitive.

Thai-based Sammitr’s success starts and ends with satisfied customers, this is challenging because the needs of customers are constantly evolving. They began operations in 1967 as a producer of car and truck body parts, molds and fixtures. From its beginning as a supplier for small original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), the company has gradually expanded to accommodate the needs of customers across a range of related industries.

Automotive suppliers must deliver more innovative technologies and solutions across a global delivery footprint without compromising quality, cost, and timing requirements of their customers.

Sammitr has been using the Tecnomatix portfolio from Siemens PLM Software to help increase planning productivity and optimise manufacturing capabilities. As the manufacturing process for the automotive industry increasingly grows more complex, automotive industry suppliers must leverage advanced intuitive solutions that simplify and streamline the PLM process.

With Plant Simulation solution, Robcad™ software and FactoryCAD™ software, Sammitr was able to forecast the cost of each product, analyse the cycle time in the production line and generate usage analysis. Upon adopting the PLM solution, the company was able to quickly optimise resources and realise major productivity improvements.

With this approach, Sammitr helped customers such as Toyota by resolving small drafting tweaks and editing pieces such as moulds and jigs internally rather than sending every minor change back to the customer for further work. This eliminated a persistent challenge that had affected the production team’s ability to meet and satisfy customer needs.

The key to automotive supplier success is greater innovation, integrated manufacturing and improved program planning. Thailand's transition to high-complexity manufacturing is not going to happen overnight. With the help of a model-driven approach, Thailand can improve its cost, quality, and flexibility in manufacturing.

Finally, it is a fact that automotive toolmakers not just in the ASEAN region but all over the world, must move forward with new technologies, and perhaps hire new personnel. However, investment may not be possible without productivity gains derived from automating design and improving calculation times. Doing so requires not just new software, but a goal to pursue the necessary standardisation, even in the face of a diverse range of work. The specific road to get there may vary from company to company, but where there’s a will, the right software technology supplier can help provide a way.