Developing a centralized data management system

Driving innovation in an R&D environment

The automotive air conditioning market is becoming increasingly competitive across the globe. As the launch cycle of new models shortens and compliance requirements for data and process specifications from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) become more stringent, the product research and development (R&D) process must become more efficient. Therefore, Huayu Sanden Automotive Air Conditioning Co., Ltd decided to advance its R&D environment by implementing Teamcenter® software.

Teamcenter is a part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services. Prior to implementing Teamcenter, Huayu Sanden’s product data was scattered in its employee’s computers, which was impossible to manage and led to the risk of lost or leaked drawing data. Additionally, there were hundreds of versions of product data, so validation was not fully guaranteed. This caused product data reuse to be impossible. “Our previous PDM solution did not meet our requirements for improving the R&D process’ productivity,” states Yao Yi, technical center director at Huayu Sanden. In the product design stage, computer-aided design (CAD) tools such as NX™ software and CATIA were used separately and offline, which prevented collaborative design. Therefore, design work efficiency was low.

This lack of integration between R&D systems for product data management (PDM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), office automation (OA) and communication tools demanded manual and paper-based data transfer. This was the root cause of low productivity and increased errors.

Huayu Sanden tried to solve these business problems by enhancing the old PDM system it was using, but its limited architecture made it difficult to integrate 3D design tools. Constraining product design activities created significant obstacles. The team needed a PLM platform to support these management standards.

Integrating a product development system using Teamcenter

Huayu Sanden worked with Siemens’ Teamcenter partner in China – United Digital Systems (UDS). Together they established three key objectives to develop a PLM solution – centralized data management, standard R&D process and intellectual asset protection. They wanted to make a good foundation by using Teamcenter to create a digitalized and intelligent R&D process. “We worked with United Digital Systems to implement Teamcenter and develop a platform for an innovative R&D process and online-based design verification and management,” explains Yi. UDS provided Huayu Sanden with their multi-decade experience in the automotive industry and helped develop solutions to resolve problems.

Along with Teamcenter, Huayu Sanden used NX, CATIA integration, graphical document management, bill-of-materials (BOM) management, version management, classification management, enterprise knowledge and patented database (DB) management, Lotus Notes integration and electronic signature and notification reminders. During the early stage of implementation, Huayu Sanden increased its work efficiency by 30 percent and established enterprise knowledge and a patented DB.

Implementing Teamcenter enabled the team to establish a complete PLM platform. Additionally, since OEM manufacturers are using the same Teamcenter-based PLM platform, data exchange is more seamless than ever.

The team can fully integrate and manage 3D product design data in one source and design data from CAD software is now reviewed and released online.

Increasing productivity and reducing errors

As a result, Huayu Sanden now has a centralized data management system, a standard R&D process with a secured data protection environment and it reduced the cost of errors and printing by 60 percent. Additionally, R&D productivity has increased due to knowledge sharing and product data reuse. The Teamcenter integration is also supporting Huayu Sanden’s future expansion plans in product design, manufacturing and cost and quality management.