Clearly, earlier industrial revolutions were all about making better use of resources (e.g. burning coal to make steam), people (e.g. workers in factories) and, latterly, electricity and computer-controlled automation. For each revolution, the companies that did well were early adopters of the technology and practices of the day, and they recognised waste when they saw it.

So, what’s going to be the secret of success under Industry 4.0?

My resounding answer is Data. Or, more specifically, making better use of data.

In the world of engineering, many companies store their design data within their organization’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. But the ‘resource’ it focusses on tends to be people and materials. Because of this, most engineering departments also use complementary solutions for Product Life Cycle (PLM), Product Data Management (PDM), Material Requirement Planning (MRP) and Document Management Systems (DMS).

However, there often is an alarming disconnect between the systems I’ve just mentioned and the tools engineers use, such as MCAD and ECAD systems – especially, if we go beyond traditional mechanical engineering into the domain of cyberphysical systems that comprise mechanical, electrical and software components. We know this because of the huge amount of time we, as engineers, spend on admin tasks. At Zuken we had an idea that this was a big problem, from talking to our customers. Indeed, a study we commissioned last year revealed worryingly that engineers spend only around half of their time on core engineering tasks.

What is an Industry 4.0 company?

I’d define one as:

1. Extremely dynamic, flexible and responsive to real-time market needs;
2. Having no physical/geographic limitations, as it is connected to sister companies, partners and suppliers via the Cloud;
3. Having seamless exchanges of data between all essential engineering design tools and PLM, ERP, PDM and DDM tool etc; and
4. Actively discouraging emails and phone calls in relation to any given project.

So, imagine life within a company that has really bought into Industry 4.0.

All design activities create or modify data that is shared with others. All other stakeholders see their respective subset of that shared data. Also, providing suppliers and contractors with restricted views (of that data) means bidding can start the instant a design is finalised. Moreover, no one need worry about the flow of the data because automated processes will greatly reduce (and ideally eliminate) the amount of time spent on admin tasks.

Under this fourth industrial revolution, making poor use of data will be as inefficient as having leaky valve seals on a steam engine under IR1, living with faulty electric motors under IR2 and incorrectly programming production line robots under IR3.

Further reading

• Find out how under Industry 4.0, maintaining and upgrading plant and equipment will become easier by making better use of engineering design data, in Maintenance: A design for life , by Marco Canducci, Industrial Plant & Equipment magazine
• Engineering Data Management guidance from Zuken

The post Data – The Secret of Success Under Industry 4.0 appeared first on English.

In my last blog, I focused on the importance of a comprehensive and standardized data model as my first key requirement to meet this challenge.

Today I want to concentrate on the various aspects of the wiring system, and consider how different users expect to see different presentations and views of the related data.

Block 1: Connectivity and topology

Let´s see how a wiring system can be described digitally: The core of a KBL or VEC file is the product description of the wiring harness itself. This description can be broken down into connectivity and topology parts.

Connectivity describes the electrical from-to relationships – or which wires connect with which components, including all technical details. On the other hand, the topology defines the geometrical details – where the wires run in the vehicle, including electromechanical parts for wire protection like tapes, tubes or grommets.

In a KBL or VEC this information is modeled in a standardized XML file. However this XML can’t be read by a user directly, so a specialized viewer is required.

Because of its rich functionality, Zuken’s E3.HarnessAnalyzer has become the de facto-standard for this task. The connectivity, as well the topology information with all its details and relations, are shown in a data grid. In addition, this information is represented in a graphical format to satisfy the different needs of each user:

• For those who are mainly interested in connectivity, the tool can render a partial schematic out of the digital connectivity model.
• If the interest lies more with the geometrical part, then a 3D rendering of the KBL data may be the perfect choice.

• But sometimes a 2D representation of the KBL data may be combined with the original harness drawing as a SVG, and can be the better choice for answering specific questions.

Block 2: Metadata, complexity and history

So, the digital data model KBL / VEC can describe the harness product completely, and a powerful viewer can make this design information easily understandable to different users to support their specific needs.

In addition to the pure design data, a KBL / VEC file can also carry a comprehensive set of metadata. The most important of these are related to complexity management, as wiring harness products are heavily variant related – often even in unique, customer-specific products. Depending on the method used, a KBL / VEC file can model a composite harness structure as well as a modular one (KSK).  And this model description has to be distributed to the users via the powerful functionality of the viewer tool – such as updating the graphical views based on the vehicle-specific selection of KSK modules.

Of course, this filtering operation must be applied to all data grids and viewpoints.

In addition, KSK can transport history information – especially for the modules. Having a powerful viewer tool, the user can easily find out details about the current product version – such as who released it and when. And they can retrieve the history of a specific harness module.

Block 3: Release and version data, PLM model

The communication of metadata in KBL is outperformed by far when using the VEC format. VEC can contain the release and version data on every single object, so the user can acquire detailed information about any connector or terminal. As a result, VEC can also claim to cover a comprehensive PLM model for wiring system components.

Such a powerful data format requires not only a viewer to create benefits for the stakeholders in the process, but also powerful authoring tools and a dedicated data management solution. With Zuken’s popular E3.series electrical design tool, in combination with its dedicated data management tool, DS-E3, Zuken is well prepared to provide the full suite of tools for the whole process chain of digital wiring system development.

Watch out for the next blog in the series.

The post The Building Blocks of a Digital Twin Strategy for Automotive Wiring Systems appeared first on English.

With Zuken’s E³.series containing a host of products including E³.schematic, E³.fluid, E³.cable, E³.formboard, E³.panel, E³.RoutingBridge, E³.PLCBridge and E³.Wiring Diagram Generator, you may feel overwhelmed on your  first approach. Well, you’ve got nothing to worry about! I’ll walk you through and provide you with a guide to figuring it all out.

Complexity of the design process

The growing number of E³.series applications and options reflects the growing complexity of the electrical engineering process itself. The engineering process has become increasingly concurrent: activities that once were performed one after another can now be carried out simultaneously. In a certain sense, with its object-oriented architecture that enables parallel development of schematic planning, fluid cable planning, and even cabinet and harness layout, E³.series was one of the first engineering software products to fully embrace the trend of concurrent engineering.

But the concurrent approach obviously does not stop at the doors of the electrical engineering department: With the growing electronic content of today’s products comes the need to exchange information with mechanical engineering to explore such things as the best position of control units, establish wire lengths, position cable channels and calculate available diameters for wire bundles. These capabilities are provided by E³.series extensions such as E³.RoutingBridge or E³.PLCBridge. The first enables exchange of schematic and connection information with the MCAD world, and the latter supports parallel development of electrical, fluid engineering and PLC software. And finally, with applications like E³.ExportToKomax, E³.reports and E³.panel+ you can generate comprehensive outputs for NC machining, wire cutting and labelling and shop-floor instructions.

Managing design data

But what about PLM – where does that come in? The answer is simple – with the increase in productivity enabled through applications like E³.series and the growing number of projects that are carried out in parallel, comes a third dimension: The need to track all design versions, revisions and modifications and make them available to your peers in mechanical engineering, production and assembly. These days this sort of information is frequently referred to as “constituents” in the product development process. What once could be communicated by word of mouth from one desk to another, can no longer be maintained without elaborate data revision and routing mechanisms that make sure everybody’s work is based on up-to-date information. If, in addition, your company is pursuing strategies such as reusing designs and modules or has geographically distributed engineering locations, reliable methods for tracking and documentation of versions, revisions and changes become vital.

Enter Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)

This is where PLM vendors typically enter the stage with the confident claim to manage everything – the cost of which would quickly be recovered in huge savings through the reduction of errors, acceleration of the time-to-market cycle etc. But be careful, the term “everything” should be examined with great care! Managing “everything” in electrical or electronic engineering often describes “unintelligent”, digitized information that documents your design as it was approved for production – in other words, a simple PDF. “Everything” does not automatically imply that you can query your system to find out in what project component XYZ is used, or what other projects need to be updated if you make a change in a design that has been reused several times in different projects.

That’s why Zuken chose to develop its own domain data management solutions based on the DS-2 platform, such as DS-E3. While our solutions don’t claim to manage EVERYTHING, they do claim to provide detailed, electrically valid query, analysis and configuration management capabilities for the E³.series electrical and fluid engineering environment, and for the CR-8000 multi-board PCB engineering environment.

What level tool are you looking for?

So next time you are trying to navigate the admittedly comprehensive list of E³.series offerings, you could use this handy reference guide as a starting point:

Further reading

For a full look at everything that’s available in E³.series, just head to the Zuken website, where you can download a comprehensive overview brochure of the main applications and extensions.

The post Things to Consider Before Investing in a New Electrical Engineering Tool appeared first on English.

Techconsult, a German-based analyst firm has just found that almost half of the engineering time of any manufacturing company is spent feeding systems and re-entering data. So it’s no surprise that economists are scratching their heads trying to explain why productivity is declining, despite constantly increasing investments in IT systems.

Complexity stunts productivity

We asked Techconsult to look into this, so they spoke to more than 150 engineering managers to find out where the problem lies. The answer: The complexity of products and processes is increasing, putting engineering productivity under pressure. Design re06use seems to be a viable solution, but the managers doubt that the available systems will help them.

This is bad news – but it gets worse. In the information age, the common cure for any problem is to throw a piece of software at it. In the case of engineering, the consensus was: Map the product development process in a system, manage the design data, and this will solve the issue. But the survey data doesn’t bear this out, finding that 77% of engineering decision-makers expect to gain no positive productivity effects from a PLM system.

Admittedly, I’m not surprised by this outcome (though I was expecting a little more positivity). But it is completely in line with my day-to-day customer experience. From the Zuken perspective, it has always been an issue that the workflows and requirements of electrical and electronics engineering were not covered by PLM systems, opening a dangerous gap where there should be a seamless cross-discipline flow of design data and process information.

The good news

So, is there any good news here? There is, and it comes in a clear statement from the engineering managers surveyed by Techconsult: 78% believe there is value in dedicated design data management for electrical and electronics engineering, tightly integrated with a PLM system (and equally tightly integrated into the ECAD system, I would add). This is what we call domain data management at Zuken. It’s just a fancy term for electrical and electronics engineers managing their own data and workflow from within their own tools. It’s something we’ve been doing for electronics engineers for a long time, but now we’re making it truly cross-discipline by adding a dedicated tool for electrical engineers, with DS-E3.

We knew the need was there, and we had an idea that companies were beginning to understand where the gaps lay in their systems, but as Robert Heinlein said: “Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.” I guess the time for domain data management has come. Finally.

Find out more at www.zuken.com/edm or watch our new movie

The post Design Time vs. Admin Overheads: How to Win the Battle by Closing the Gaps appeared first on English.