Harmonizing Automotive Design: Making Electronics and Mechanical Component Development Compliment Each Other

Kevin Baughey, Director, ENOVIA Automotive Industry Solutions, Dassault Systèmes
Rick Stanton, Director, Global Semiconductor and High-Tech Industry Solutions Strategy, Dassault Systèmes

Gone are the days when creating an automobile involved nothing but grease, grit and roaring engines.

Smart safety systems, parking sensors, tire pressure monitors and MP3 integration have become common, expected features, and the need for embedded electronics and software systems in automobiles is growing. In fact, electronics and software systems account for almost 35 percent of the production cost of an average car—not even taking into account their ubiquity within the luxury market. In the past, electronics and software were often considered a secondary priority to the rest of the vehicle, but as the key driver of future functions and features, they can no longer be thought of as such.

With the current state of the global economy, auto companies and organizations involved in the automotive supply chain are being forced to cut costs, improve efficiency and show that they can still provide strong value to customers to survive. Therefore, ensuring that development lead times and lifecycles are coordinated from chip to chassis is of the upmost importance. With almost 52 percent of automotive recalls due to electrical system failures, automakers need to be more focused than ever on getting these right at the development and manufacturing stage.

Automotive Electronics Create Challenges

The standard challenges auto manufacturers face in trying to encourage synchronicity across production lines are clear—cost, time-to-market delays, collaboration between designers and engineers, availability of physical and labor resources, supplier relationships and supply chain management. To be successful, organizations must find a way to enable the synergetic integration of mechanical, electronics and software engineering. This entails reconciling and coordinating the different development lead times and lifecycles inherent in the creation of ICs, printed circuit boards, embedded software and mechanical components so that all share real-time data and fit together to create the vehicle with no delay.

The most effective solution is one that can reconcile all these challenges and address them holistically, creating a single virtual finished product—the vehicle—and organizing the components and required processes therein. Engineers need to be able to see a single definition for all mechatronics data—one that gives them access to accurate, up-to-date information and enables cross-functional teams to operate more effectively.

In other words, the most effective solution is product lifecycle management (PLM).

Why PLM?

One of the main benefits of PLM for automakers is its ability to shorten new vehicle introduction cycles and lower costs throughout the production lifecycle by increasing the overall efficiency of the development process. PLM provides automotive engineers with end-to-end process coverage for electronics and software systems engineering. It links logical definition with physical definition, down to and including manufacturing preparation and documentation.

At the same time, PLM can also be used to enable and/or improve process standardization, reuse intellectual property (IP), eliminate processes that don't add value (e.g., manual data transfers from system to system) and properly manage the supply chain—all important features as automotive engineers work to create an integrated development process for both the electronics and traditional parts of the vehicle.

Using virtual development to drive manufacturing and supply chain optimization can take automakers to the next level in terms of efficiency and competitive advantage—a categorical necessity for market survival in the current conditions. Automotive companies embracing the full PLM vision can drive profitable innovation for streamlined operations, quicker time-to-market and general strategic optimization.

PLM can simplify the processes involved in automotive design and development—especially in terms of collaborative engineering, standardization, mechatronics, change management, components engineering and IP reuse. The resulting benefits are substantial.

With PLM guiding the development of both software and mechanical, engineers can:

• Use a single repository to store all product information and the processes that govern them throughout their lifecycle.
• Maintain traceability from ideas and requirements throughout the product lifecycle, closing the gap between what is produced and what the market wants.
• Reduce product launch time, minimize errors and increase control on costs.
• Manage product development complexity while executing common platform strategy that maximizes design and knowledge reuse from one program to another.
• Enable real-time decision-making at all levels.
• Perform virtual testing to increase product performance and safety.
• Increase collaboration and innovation, especially within companies that have globally distributed factories and offices.
• Implement quality methodologies and other best practices for critical processes that improve vehicle quality.
• Define and simulate plant assembly lines concurrently with product design to accelerate start of production and time-to-volume.
• Ensure customer satisfaction by prioritizing user demand in operations and integrating customer requirements and specifications throughout the engineering process.

Ensuring Reliability

It is of the utmost importance that thermal, mechanical and environmental testing is performed on the electronic systems, mechanical systems and the vehicle as a unified entity—as testing them in this way is the key to helping automakers meet higher reliability and performance standards. One of the top benefits of using a PLM system in the automotive development process is the ability to simulate how the electronics and mechanical pieces will react on two fronts: (1) as they are assembled in the factory and (2) in actual driving conditions.

With the life span and reliability of electronic systems and their interconnecting components a major concern for consumers and dealers—especially with thermal and mechanical loads increasing as electronic module sizes decrease—manufacturers need to be certain everything will work as advertised before setting the assembly line up to run. In these tight economic times, recalls or dealer-funded repairs can be disastrous.

It is more cost-effective for automotive engineers to replace physical testing with virtual testing—as long as the vehicle is tested as a whole, not separate parts tested at separate times—with no way of telling how real-world factors such as accidents or weather may change the picture and send them back to the drawing board.

Virtual modeling using three-dimensional (3D) computer-aided design (CAD) tools can help companies achieve a competitive advantage by putting them in the driver's seat for modeling the most ergonomic designs, testing vehicle control responses and ensuring the reaction times of safety features.

Capturing Best Practices

Arguably the most beneficial form of collaboration is internal. One of the advantages of PLM is having instant access to previous design iterations and lessons learned from other engineers. For example, an automotive design engineer who determines that a vehicle needs to be wired for Bluetooth compatibility to meet customer requirements can search the PLM system to learn what co-workers did with hardware, software drivers, etc. on previous projects that called for Bluetooth.

To achieve this, PLM solutions must support end-to-end traceability—the ability to navigate from requirements to features, logical/systems view and physical (as designed) product views. This traceability (requirement-to-feature-to-logical-to-physical (RFLP)) requires a closed-loop feedback system that is often lost at some point during the product lifecycle. Without this feedback system in place, it is difficult to capture the lessons learned during the design process and avoid repeating costly mistakes in future product iterations.

The closed-loop feedback mechanism begins with customer and market requirements for engineer-to-order (ETO), build-to-order (BTO), design-to-order (DTO) and original design manufacturing (ODM) models. Once customer requirements are defined, they can be mapped to features. The features are integrated to provide the overall solution, at which point they're also categorized in the PLM system for future reuse. Capturing and validating all these configurations before the design process even begins precludes the need to go back and rework designs.

Thus, in a PLM environment, the entire process of design becomes multi-dimensional and virtual, complete with months or even years of previous best practices compiled for easy reference. With that in mind, it's clear to see that building an automobile is no longer the linear process once associated with long assembly lines and overworked linemen.

Configuration and Catalog Management

While advances in manufacturing collaboration make the process of developing automobiles more intuitive, the speed of technological progress and influence of consumer demands are moving at a faster pace than struggling automakers can handle.

According to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) Xplore publication (volume 35, issue 1, 2002), vehicles manufactured in 1955 incorporated approximately 45 meters of wiring for electronics; high-end vehicles today have four kilometers worth of wiring. There is tremendous room for error involved in trying to deliver micro devices at the same time as macro chassis and cabs—especially without a strong data management and product development system in place.

By using configuration management tools to manage electrical systems design for the entire vehicle, knowledge of part commonality is increased, leading to a more integrated, updated parts catalog that reduces redundant parts from being ordered and lowers the cost of the overall vehicle design.

The system also provides traceability between final product and initial customer requirements to help ensure that users' needs have truly been met. This type of system can also be used to trace components used and compare with recent environmental regulations to ensure that the vehicle—its circuits, electronics and mechanical parts—is compliant with all relevant statutes.

Improving Collaboration

At each phase of development, every stakeholder is adding value—design engineers, electrical engineers, production engineers, safety and compliance officers, marketers, finance advisors and more. Production engineers advise about a potential manufacturing problem, and design engineers eliminate it before it can actually become a problem. Electrical engineers work with design engineers to make sure that the onboard electronics and wiring plans make sense. The marketing team studies how the product is evolving so it can get to work on packaging and display advertisements. Financial analysts monitor material and production costs as they develop so they can decide how to maintain profitable price points.

Everyone navigates the data quickly and intuitively through a common dashboard as design, engineering and manufacturing converge into one cohesive unit through the use of a PLM system.

The new prototype for automotive design is contingent upon the absence of prototypes, thanks to the advent of virtual product development, testing and manufacturing. In the future, all automotive components will be digitally designed, produced and managed. Avoiding physical prototypes and validating the ability to manufacture products (as well as knowing that they meet customer and market requirements upfront) will enable automakers to grow and profit while eliminating waste. These gains will be driven by the ability to work in 3D, and not just the visual 3D associated with CAD applications, but with simulation, digital manufacturing and more.

Conclusion

Looking at the past 20 years in automotive design, the real differentiator between cars with a low price point and those marketed for tens of thousands of dollars more isn't the number of cylinders, the size of the vehicle or even the body design. It isn't the minute intricacies of leather detailing and high-gloss finishes—it's what the car can do for its driver and passengers. It's what the onboard computer can instruct it to do, how quickly it can elicit a response and how reliably it can prevent failure. Electronics are vital to today's automobiles.

Early in the development cycle, engineers need a solution that fosters efficient systems design and takes into account how well software and electronics fit and work within the entire digital car mockup.

Only PLM can ensure that all aspects of auto manufacturing intersect successfully in this way.

About the Authors

Kevin Baughey leads the automotive industry solutions group for the ENOVIA brand within Dassault Systèmes. Responsibilities in this role involve creating and demonstrating value for the automotive industry through core product development and strategic partnership programs. He came to Dassault Systèmes in March of 2008 after spending 12 years at various positions within Ford Motor Company. His experience spans through production supervision, manufacturing engineering, component product design, electrical systems design, program management and infotainment product management. His most recent assignment was that of product manager for the Ford SYNC feature, a partnership with Microsoft for an infotainment platform. He got his Bachelor of Science from Michigan Technological University in mechanical engineering. This was followed by an MBA from the University of Michigan and finally a Master of Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in system design. You can reach Kevin Baughey at kevin.baughey@3ds.com.

Rick Stanton is the director of industry solutions strategy within the global semiconductor and high-tech vertical market for Dassault Systèmes. Rick has over 20 years of experience within the electronic design automation (EDA) and collaborative design methodology space, focusing on IC product design. He has held leadership roles at both Synchronicity and MatrixOne as they were brought into the ENOVIA brand of Dassault Systèmes. Rick has been involved with customers and successful deployments across a worldwide account base. Prior to these positions, Rick had a number of applications specialist, development and support roles at Viewlogic Systems, Racal-Redac and RCA/GE/Harris Semiconductor. Rick has a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Rutgers University. You can reach Rick Stanton at rick.stanton@3ds.com.

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