Improving efficiency by speeding up design cycles by 20 percent and design adjustment time by 30 percent

Striving for more sustainable mobility solutions

Environmentally friendly, efficient and customizable public transportation is important for creating a more sustainable future. One company, Tremonia Mobility GmbH, located in Dortmund, Germany, prides itself on the quality of its sustainable mobility solutions, specializing in the design and manufacture of minibuses for public transportation, including city, shuttle and tourist transport. Its production line includes vehicles with combustion engines and fully electric models.

“In a world full of possibilities and constant change, we face future challenges that need to be overcome, such as the need for more sustainable solutions in the area of mobility,” says Josa Prinz, chief executive officer (CEO) and chief technology officer (CTO) at Tremonia Mobility. “The connectivity of the world is another central concern,
especially for our customers in the automotive sector who encounter problems in the field and thus rely on continuous data availability. Creating interfaces and ensuring seamless processes will undoubtedly be one of our future challenges.”

The company’s innovative minibuses are not only easier to maneuver in busy urban environments, narrow streets and parking lots in European cities but also offer increased functionality with purpose-built equipment. For example, equipment that caters to those with special mobility needs.

To overcome these challenges, Tremonia Mobility is using Siemens Digital Industries Software’s Solid Edge® software, NX™ software and the Teamcenter® Share app, which are part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services.

Achieving manufacturing excellence

Originally part of Daimler Corporation, Tremonia Mobility became an independent company and was renamed in 2022 and has produced more than 25,000 premium minibuses for public transport, shuttle and travel. The company is committed to designing environmentally friendly, efficient and customizable minibuses, predominantly based on the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter.

The company manufactures all their minibuses in their Dortmund facility and produces 1,200 to 1,400 units a year. The company is also expanding their brand expertise to include other original equipment manufacturer (OEM) products, such as Volkswagen Crafter minibuses, to increase their product portfolio.

Tremonia Mobility’s innovative solutions are driven by its history as part of Daimler Corporation and its newfound independence. “We have high standards for our production and quality checks, and in how we design and fulfill the customer requirements,” says Christian Wünsch, head of research and development (R&D) and product management at Tremonia Mobility. “We specialize in city buses, which normally require meeting high standards, such as safety assists, passenger information systems and interior design.”

Enhancing design efficiency

To help achieve these goals, Tremonia Mobility integrated Solid Edge and NX into its development process, which are included in the Mechanical Design Bundle from Siemens. Since Tremonia Mobility was previously part of Daimler, the company continues to use NX, which was Daimler's primary computer-aided design (CAD) system with an interface to its product lifecycle management (PLM) system. Daimler uses it for designing individual parts and assembling complete vehicles, performing installation studies or digital mockups (DMUs), creating production-oriented drawings for suppliers and generating installation drawings for internal production. However, combining it with Solid Edge is advantageous because it allows Tremonia Mobility to easily transfer existing data from NX to Solid Edge. Both systems use the Parasolid kernel, enabling fast conversion or direct insertion and use via the CAD-Direct interface.

“There was a large amount of data conversion involved when we transferred NX files and opened the data in Solid Edge, but the changeover went smoothly since they are both part of the Siemens software family,” says Wünsch. “When we left Daimler, we had two or three terabytes of data that had to be integrated step-by-step. Solid Edge certainly had the capacity to handle converting the data. The system offered a lot of freedom.”

“The decision to use Solid Edge is the result of a clear goal: we want to act faster while remaining cost-effective,” says Prinz. “Compared to the old way, using Solid Edge, we can document parts, components and 3D layouts more efficiently concerning breadth and depth and streamline and make processes more agile.”

The design team has been using Solid Edge since January 2023. Consisting of about seven designers in-house and three in India, the team had a two-week training period to get up and running in Solid Edge. ISAP GmbH, a Siemens partner, helped with integrating the new CAD tool. “ISAP has offered us substantial support while transferring the data, setting up the new IT infrastructure and prepping our team to efficiently use the new software tool,” says Wünsch. “The design team felt that Solid Edge was very intuitive overall, and they have been able to do a lot of processing more quickly.”

With this expansion of its software toolset and more flexible software choices, Tremonia Mobility has optimized its processes, and the fully interoperable solution set provided the team with the opportunity to collaborate on common data at the speed they need to innovate, which is an ideal environment for a medium-sized company.

This step not only facilitates onboarding employees but also allows Tremonia Mobility to respond more efficiently and flexibly to customers’ needs. Additionally, with Solid Edge, Tremonia Mobility sped up design cycles by 20 percent and increased the speed of design adjustments by 30 percent.

The company’s use of Solid Edge varies whether it is a frame design or paneling and the interior of the company’s five models of minibuses. “Using Solid Edge is also beneficial due to its embedded synchronous technology, which enables us to do part changes quickly,” says Wünsch. “This helps because we are working with large amounts of data and legacy data.”

Additionally, along with the addition of Solid Edge, Tremonia Mobility had access to Teamcenter Share, allowing them to share assemblies and projects, track tasks and seamlessly collaborate via the cloud. “Leveraging Teamcenter Share enables us to simplify data exchange and project management with our partner,” says Wünsch. “In addition, it’s a secure tool to provide technical data for suppliers and partners.”

Speeding forwards the future

Tremonia Mobility’s strengths lie in producing buses, integrating electrical and electronic components and their years of experience in quality management. These unique features make their minibuses attractive to customers worldwide.

“The future of mobility lies in efficient, sustainable solutions, and our buses precisely meet these requirements,” says Prinz. “Adapting to alternative drives and reducing emissions are challenges we actively address. With a broad spectrum of customers, from small bus companies to municipalities, we are on a good path to establishing ourselves globally. The partnership with Siemens, specifically the combination of design tools from Designcenter, enabled us to improve our process optimization, creating an ideal solution set for our medium-sized company. Next, we want to investigate the benefits of immersive engineering for our business and focus on a broader integration of Siemens tools."