CHALLENGE
A global automotive manufacturer wanted to optimize decision-making around its innovative line of Electric and Hybrid vehicles. But disparate data and reporting practices made it difficult for designers and engineers to get the insights they needed. The organization required a single source of truth and reliable, scalable data perspectives that would help users across different areas (executives, tactical, and operational) make the best choices based on data-driven, unique insights.
SOLUTION
The company used 3DEXPERIENCE Data Science solutions to consolidate its data. They created multiple data perspectives, including one related to a unique Bill of Materials (BOM) Maturity and Change Release. These solutions applied advanced indexing, data consolidation and semantics capabilities to spot the strong and weak signals in the business and recommend the most efficient actions, contextualized through the virtual twin of the product.
BENEFITS
The BOM Maturity and Change Release data-powered solutions (named Data Perspectives) reveal valuable insights into areas for improvement, projected into the virtual twin, enabling users across different organizations to collaborate to mitigate risks and resolve issues, ensuring projects are completed on time, on budget and with the required quality. The customer was able to monitor average release cycle time and follow up with assigned users on pending part releases, reducing the release cycle time from 5 days to their target of 2 days. Additional data-powered solutions are being developed to extend the capabilities to other key business areas. Since the data perspectives are scalable and reusable, the organization can use them across new and existing programs.
Breaking New Ground in Car Design
Speed, accuracy and continual innovation are start-line essentials for this automotive OEM. In this high-pressure sector, companies must constantly fine-tune their cars while controlling costs and keeping pace with changing regulations. A single vehicle design can go through hundreds of design changes – involving huge volumes of complex technical data.
The world-leading automotive OEM wanted to access and visualize its data in different ways to drive better, faster decision-making across the lifecycle of its vehicles. Disparate reporting practices – using multiple spreadsheets and business intelligence apps – were hampering its efforts and making it difficult to obtain a complete, up-to-date view of what was happening.
To overcome these challenges, the organization aimed to create scalable and reusable data perspectives – targeted insights used for the continual optimization of a car’s design, safety and performance. Its initial focus was on use cases that would allow designers and engineers to assess its BOMs in the context of different requirements, and to navigate their way through complex, multidisciplinary design changes. Achieving that would take reporting capabilities beyond those of standard business intelligence tools.
A single source of truth was vital to provide a reliable foundation for these data perspectives. The company had complex data spread across different systems and trusted the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to consolidate it. By using – and expanding – the platform’s integrated reporting capabilities, it would be able to create the perspectives it needed. It chose 3DEXPERIENCE Data Science Experiences (DSE) to bring that vision to life.
Putting Data into Perspective
The DSE provides unique capabilities to enable data-driven decision-making through the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. It allows users to process complex, structured and unstructured data in real time, gaining a deeper understanding of issues across the product lifecycle in a way relevant to their work.
The Dassault Systèmes team shared industry best practices with the OEM to help scope business requirements for the data perspectives, identifying more than 13 potential use case scenarios for the development pipeline.
Managing BOM Maturity
An accurate BOM is the driving force behind efficient product development and maintenance. The company’s designers and engineers didn’t just want a holistic view of engineering BOM (EBOM) maturity and computer-aided design BOM (CAD BOM) maturity. They also required a clear picture of how these two BOMs align. This level of insight was difficult to achieve while essential data and reporting activities were dispersed across different systems.
3DEXPERIENCE applied data science to develop a BOM Maturity data perspective. It provides a holistic dashboard view that makes it easy to monitor BOM and CAD maturity and timelines. Users can view the full vehicle BOM or drag and drop their selected part into the Product Explorer and 3D Navigator to instantly see a data perspective of the components involved. Advanced indexing, data consolidation and semantics capabilities empower users to filter the data, explore how the part’s maturity has evolved and see any events that have affected it during its lifecycle.
In addition to visualizing parts and CAD maturity, users can run simulations to identify and analyze potential clashes. By filtering their results and color-washing the 3D model to reflect different attributes, they can quickly visualize the state of each part in the context of the work they are doing.
This single source of truth for BOM maturity supports fast, confident decisions, helping to streamline design and engineering while reducing the risk of costly issues.
Conquering Change Management
High-performance vehicles push the boundaries of speed, performance and dynamic engineering. Many design modifications are required to get it right, involving teams from different disciplines who each bring their own perspective. Coordinating their efforts is a complex task, and a holistic view of each change is vital to streamline the process, ensure compliance and avoid clashes and costly delays.
3DEXPERIENCE worked with the automotive manufacturer to develop a Change Release data perspective to ensure everyone involved in implementing design and engineering changes stays on track. A dedicated change management dashboard makes it easy for users to view, open and complete change orders and actions. They can filter the data to view task details and durations, using criteria such as who owns the task or the type of approval required.
Users can view all data – including data from external systems, such as ERPs – on the platform, contextualized on the virtual twin of products. Managers, designers and engineers gain immediate visibility into change backlogs and boost collaboration and efficiency to achieve the aim of each modification.
Scalable Perspectives, Infinite Possibilities
Data is the heartbeat of today’s high-performance vehicles, informing everything from vehicle design to performance predictions. As it continues to roll out its BOM Maturity and Change Release data perspectives to users, the manufacturer is already exploring how to expand its use across its programs.
As engineering data grows, Data Science Experiences can help to analyze more features related to BOM for previously completed product designs. Using cutting-edge AI techniques, it reveals unique insights into hidden patterns that can help predict stability and on-time completion for future product designs at an early stage, accelerating design work and ultimately delivering higher-quality products that meet program management plans. Advanced AI features, supported by machine learning and virtual companions, secure continuous innovation across future product lines.
Data Perspectives already in the pipeline include Weight and Balance, which is crucial to designing cars for optimal performance; and Data Quality, to ensure that EBOM attributes are correct and complete.
Work has also started on developing data perspectives for other areas, including cost assessment, parts planning and key performance indicators. Future development possibilities range from manufacturing and resource management to sustainability, vehicle testing and validation, and governance and tracking.
With a single source of truth and advanced data science, there is no limit to what the company can achieve. 3DEXPERIENCE DSE enables scaling and reuse of each data perspective, and the organization is exploring how to apply them across new and existing programs. Whatever the future holds, Dassault Systèmes will be on hand to help it configure and scale the data perspectives it requires.
“High-performance car development is a hugely data-driven sector, bringing unique challenges for manufacturers,” said Morgan Zimmermann, chief executive officer of 3DEXPERIENCE at Dassault Systèmes. “These organizations must operate at lightning speed, on the forefront of what is achievable in vehicle design and performance. They have the knowledge and the know-how to do that. By combining advanced data science solutions with the secure, collaborative environment of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, our customer can transform raw data into actionable insights that enable dramatic engineering and efficiency gains – and ground-breaking performance.”
By combining advanced data science solutions with the secure, collaborative environment of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, our customer can transform raw data into actionable insights that enable dramatic engineering and efficiency gains – and ground-breaking performance.
Morgan Zimmermann, CEO of Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE
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