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Simulation and auto R&D

As the Indian automobile sector tools up to take on all comers at home and around the world, we look at the IT tools used and processes in place at their R&D units. By Kushal Shah

India’s economic growth has given a fillip to the buying capacity of the average consumer. One of the many manifestations of this wave of consumerism is the way in which automobiles are purchased nowadays and the manner in which vehicle owners keep trading up to better models in a few years. All of which is forcing automobile companies to come out with new models and variants of successful models in the shortest time-frame possible. These requirements need to be met without compromising on the quality and safety of a vehicle, or for that matter, one of the most important components of a vehicle—its tires.

Vehicles and vehicular component (OEM vendors) providers need to come up with the best quality product and assure safety by running their products through a battery of tests. Enabling this process are the IT tools used in their R&D units.

IT is being used by these companies to perform faster and better. Many IT vendors supply 3D design tools to this industry. From design to simulation to virtual analysis to conditional testing to impact analysis, R&D units of these automobile companies are making the best use of features offered by vendors such as Dassault System, Autodesk, and other CAD/CAM solution providers. Domestic players such as Apollo Tyres, Mahindra and Mahindra, Maruti and Tata Motors have just started their race to become multinationals and IT can certainly help in achieving that goal.

The manual era

Before the introduction of IT in the automotive industry, manual processes for manufacturing were commonplace. In those days, car manufactures had to make trial prototypes of their cars of approximate specifications and then test these manually by trying out each of their prototypes and then they made the best possible vehicle based on those results. This not only consumed a lot of money, it also wasted substantial time.

Talking about the old days, P K Mohamed, Chief –Research & Technology, Apollo Tyres, said, “Earlier, we used to assume and approximate data and on that basis we developed a series of compounds and then made a series of tires. Each tire ran for seven or eight days. You can imagine how many tires we had to make for a single decision.” It used to take about 18 months to come out with a new tire—from conceptualization to the full usable product. With the help of these tools, it takes about three to four months for new product generation at Apollo Tyres. These manual processes also had a negative impact on some employees as they were continuously involved in monotonous manual processes.

The situation was a little different at Mahindra and Mahindra. Before using IT, their approach was a reactive one. They reacted to problems only after cars were launched and changed the vehicles accordingly by bringing out variants which used to cost them a lot.

On the other hand, Honda Motors India, a company that primarily assembles its cars in the country, had a different methodology. “We used to assemble trial cars here as we have to customize them according to local needs. We used to test them in real conditions and then make better versions of a model,” said Hilal Isar Khan, Head IT at Honda Siel Cars India.

In all, a lot of manual work took place in the pre-IT era. Using IT, these companies have overcome all these difficulties and upped the quality of their products and best of all they have achieved all this in a shorter time-frame.

R&D and IT

The use of IT has helped redefine the way in which R&D is handled in this industry. The product development cycle has gone down for some, while for others, the time to market a new product has come down. The quality of products has also gone up, and with that the trust of consumers. Looking at three different segments of the industry viz. tire manufacturing—Apollo Tyres; complete in-house manufacturing of vehicles—Mahindra Motors; and vehicle assembling—Honda Siel, we present a reasonably comprehensive picture of how IT tools are useful in dealing with time-consuming problems.

Apart from their physical existence as a black, round support system for cars, tires are assumed to be an inexpensive and low technology product and purchase decisions are made solely on pricing, and to an extent, perceived brand value, without knowing the importance of the same in driving comfort and safety. Barely anyone has bothered to know about the manufacturing process of a tire. It is probably one of the most technology-intensive combination of rubber, metal and various other chemicals. “A tire is a design with a complex cross section, composite materials and complex loading conditions,” explained Renuka Srinivasan, General Manager, Simula.

During the design and testing phase, there are various aspects that must be taken care of by a R&D unit. Some of the key areas revolve around the core design as per the requirements, performance measures such as tire durability, rolling resistance, thread wear, force and movement, noise and vibration. “Rolling resistance is one the most important and a big challenge for the industry. If you are not using modern simulation tools then it becomes a problem,” added Mohamed.

Apollo has divided its team into three divisions—materials, design and simulation, and this team provides inputs to the company’s product group. It uses tools such as Abaqus—the only simulation tool used by Apollo Tyres, CATIA and commercially available CAD/CAM software. It has even developed some tools in-house for specific testing on noise. Abaqus has helped them solve most of their quality worries. Analysis of a tire’s behavior under various conditions such as rim mounting, inflation and footprint is tested with it. The software gives a holistic view of the screen in 3D format as to how it behaves under various conditions. For concept development, CATIA V5 is widely used and the company will soon be working exclusively on it as it has seen a lot of benefits. The company is even able to figure out how a worn-out tire will behave.

Complete vehicle manufacturing

Companies that are involved in complete vehicle manufacturing have everything from R&D to manufacturing in house. Companies in this category include Mahindra and Mahindra, Maruti and Tata Motors. Using R&D in a process to reduce the number of iterations is the strategy adopted by these players. “Our R&D IT is helping us with regard to product design, virtual prototyping, virtual analysis and in identifying component failure. You can do things virtually using IT which saves time, gives us accurate results, and helps reduce time to market,” said KH Nabar, Senior GM–Corporate IT, Mahindra and Mahindra.

At Mahindra and Mahindra, manufacturing R&D goes through many phases. Using document management inputs and market analysis, vehicle design starts taking place. At the engineering level, CAD comes into the picture. In terms of tools, the company uses CATIA for body design. They even make use of UG and Ideas software for component drawing and virtual analysis. These simulations help them check wire mesh connections, air pressure and load among other things. At this level, actuals are tested against desired data. After all these processes, in actual testing they find further flaws and go back to R&D. Basically, the earlier you find errors, the better it is for the process and the lower the cost. “From designing to testing to making the vehicle ready for a job, one level is the responsibility of R&D, and perfection in work can reduce iterations and hence the cost,” explained Ashok Asawale, Head-IT for Auto Sector, Mahindra and Mahindra.

Collaborative assembling

MNCs working in India do not necessarily have their complete manufacturing operations in the country. They work partially in India and partially at their headquarters or regional headquarters. For India, they usually have only assembling units which use IT for localization and collaboration. Companies such as Honda and Toyota have similar models. “When we launch a particular model in India, we have to put it through a lot of localization. For example, in India, cars need to have greater ground clearance than is the case in other parts of the world. For all of this we use many 3D modeling tools such as CATIA,” explained Khan.

Using these tools, according to Khan, they can even fix the screws in the vehicle and check how it will behave. They perform complete impact analysis on the computer. They can simulate head-to-head collisions and vary the speed and thereby impact and decide on what kind of safety equipment is required.

Apart from this, for R&D, assemblers use IT for collaborative data sharing and real-time design and testing with the parent company’s headquarters or with OEM vendors. Amongst other solutions, they use a few SolidWorks products and proprietary tools for some tasks.

Specific challenges

The problems related to R&D and IT in this industry generally have to do with the solutions and manpower needed to operate the same. Firstly, there are not too many vendors for these kinds of solutions and options are few. Even if vendors are available, there are problems associated with the implementation and back-end hardware required. Convincing top management is another issue faced by the CIOs of these companies. “Change and acceptance management of users is a big concern as they take time to know the solutions and their features,” explained Khan.

One more operational worry comes from the employees themselves. It is hard to find the right manpower to handle these tools as a lot of expertise and domain knowledge is required, apart from 3D skill sets. “For using these tools, we usually hire only IITians and PhD holders as it is concept-intensive and needs a lot of expertise,” said Mohamed. On the other hand, some companies are ready to compromise on academic qualifications if they find the right talent.

The use of IT in R&D is still in its infancy. The race for the Indian automobile sector to go international and match up with the standards of Ferrari, Mercedes and Rolls Royce has just begun.

kushal.shah@expressindia.com