Drawing on the body of change

Companies engaged in complex development projects, especially those involving collaboration between designers in different countries, seem to be coming to the conclusion that PDM (product data management) and PLM (product lifecycle management) systems need to be central to managing change. Changes are an inevitable part of engineering design, whether they arise from alterations to the specification resulting from market dynamics, what suppliers have to offer, better options not originally conceived, or simply mistakes. And if you want to see how it's managed well, look no further than projects in the aerospace and automotive sectors. Jeff King, digital design manager for Bentley Motors in Crewe, for example, describes design and development at his company as serial: styling followed by engineering, analysis and production. Styling is done using Alias, with the design concept transferred as an IGES file to ICEM Surf, while Catia is used for engineering design. But it's all getting faster: of recent projects, the Bentley GT took four years to bring to market, the Flying Spur three and the Convertible two and a half years. The reduced timescales have also in each case been associated with significantly reduced costs. So far, improved IT has only been used to refine a traditional process but King says that one of his goals is to make the whole cycle more parallel. Bentley already uses Delmia simulation software to speed up manufacturing engineering processes, but is now also embracing an Enovia PLM solution from IBM to improve detailed management and re-use, which King says, "will hopefully further reduce costs." Surface modelling Software developers are helping here. Concurrency and change management have been assisted by the agreement between ICEM and Dassault Systmes, in March last year, which led to ICEM Shape Design. According to Philippe Laufer, director R&D for Dassault Systmes, the integration of ICEM Shape Design and Catia v5 will bring associative surface modelling onto the desktop and reduce data exchange overhead. Class A templates are available now in Catia v5 r16 with ICEM Shape Design. The next step, due this year, is development of an integrated concept, styling and Class A System. Today, body engineering, typically undertaken using Catia, can start while the body skin design development and surface modelling phases are still proceeding in ICEM Shape Design. But when the new concept and styling product emerges, associativity will move right back to the conceptual design and styling stage. Says King: "We applaud both ICEM and Dassault Systmes for this development. In the future, as we enhance the computer systems that support our new vehicle development processes, the use of ICEM Shape Design will enable native Catia v5-based design data to be used throughout the entire vehicle design development, engineering and manufacturing processes. This would remove the need to translate data at any stage, thereby improving the overall product development workflow and avoiding the possibility of costly delays caused by incomplete data." ICEM CEO Lee Cureton predicts a time when a new car could go from concept to manufacture in just 12 weeks. Admittedly, he's talking about car model updates rather than total redesigns - but even where the base engineering stays much the same while the visual appearance changes, that's quite an achievement. The challenges of design and change management with motor vehicles are likely to become even greater as design becomes more global, involving multiple collaborating companies. Mike Reeve, chief engineer vehicle design at Lotus Engineering, gives some indication in the report on a DTI Global Watch Mission to study the possibilities for collaborative automotive design engineering, working with companies in India. He says that in the UK, state of the art for OEMs, Tier One suppliers and engineering service sector companies is to undertake design work in 2D and 3D CAD using Catia v4 and v5, UG-NX, some Pro/Engineer and ICEM Surf. Smaller companies continue to use file-based data management, but all those engaged in remote engineering are releasing their data into PDM systems. Internationally, CAD is undertaken using Catia v4/v5 and UG-NX, with data managed by PDM systems like Enovia VPM, SmarTeam and Teamcenter. OEMs are working with Tier One suppliers on advanced vehicle design, and the trend, he says, is for specialist work to be outsourced as opposed to full vehicle design. In the future, he foresees global collaboration using what he describes as "complex PLM nodes" containing increasing amounts of IP (intellectual property). He believes companies will increasingly work together, regulated by a PLM environment, to develop full sub-systems. Issues to address will include: specifications, knowledge-based engineering, developments by suppliers, advanced product quality planning (APQP), cost and weight control, customer feedback and product update strategies. The challenge in such advanced global development programmes, he says, will be to bring Indian companies and others along. Syed Nabeel Hashmi, chief executive of Thermosole, a blow and injection moulding company based in Lahore, Pakistan, says he likes working with British firms because engineers are empowered to take decisions, and they're open to ideas as to how to improve their products. Two steps ahead Pakistan, India and China all now have their own motor industries, and while they may not yet be quite as competent as those in the UK, their costs are far lower and they are all very well clued up on CAD, FEA (finite element analysis), CFD (computational fluid dynamics), the ideas behind PLM and the possibilities these tools offer. The only solution for UK companies is to keep at least two steps ahead of these other countries so that our businesses can maintain their positions at the top of the food chain. However, it is not only what's left of the UK automotive sector that's embracing PDM and PLM as a means of managing design and change processes, but also makers of products such as printers, where competition from the Far East is hot. Rob Welford, director of engineering at inkjet and print heads company Xaar, has championed the adoption of MatrixOne's PLM. He says: "Given the large volume of design files generated by our engineers as a result of our rapidly increasing product portfolio, it is imperative that they have the tools they need to manage information effectively." With PLM processes in place, Xaar's engineers, development partners and world-wide sales engineers can now track any number of design revisions and reduce the time it takes to communicate changes from one week to a minute - alowing them to focus on design and not design management. "The deployment was prompted by the results of a study undertaken by engineering staff at our Cambridge and Sweden offices," he explains. "This provided us with a detailed insight into the daily workings of our engineers, and identified the opportunities to streamline the amount of time and resources dedicated to each task - as well as opportunities to significantly improve the quality of information available within our organisation and with key development partners." DEK Printing machines based in Dorset, on the other hand, has found the ideal solution to its very similar problems to be Pro/Engineer and Windchill PDM Link from PTC. The company makes machines that employ stencils to print solder paste onto printed circuit boards. It is now able to link a specific product configuration to the serial number of an individual machine and then track it for life, with any changes being updated instantly.