The wave of inflation and deflation crowns a state’s economy every now and then. With a good GDP growth projected for India, we are rising up as automobile innovators and a choice manufacturing destination for automobile superpowers globally. Automobile manufacturers and suppliers are not only challenged with developing high-performance, profitable transportation, they must also fulfil regional requirements for fuel consumption, recyclability, and other environmental impacts as well.
One major challenge in achieving quality in a global set up is the multi-national engineering offices spread across the world. Additionally, this lack of integration interferes with a company’s ability to manage multi-CAD data, projects, documents, or its bill-of-materials.
India has come a long way from manufacturing its first passenger car between 1985 to 1995(in collaboration with Suzuki Japan), to automobile giants investing in Indian market. Developments in 3D design and engineering in the past few decades, global ventures, setting up of multiple manufacturing facilities for Indian and International automobile design manufacturers, have brought to our market a huge variety. With the introduction of 3D design technology, automotive parts can be easily assembled with advanced automobile software. Many manufacturers have launched models exclusively for sale in India, because of the ever increasing demand for choice and exclusivity in the options that the population demands.
Ford has unveiled its iconic Ford Mustang in India and will make its debut in second quarter of FY2016 within the price band of Rs. 45 lakh (US$ 66,146) and Rs. 50 lakh (US$ 73,496). While the previous models produced by Ford truly proved to be a ‘Drive for everyone’ as they covered all the segments with their car models. Joining the bandwagon are big names like Mercedes Benz and BMW. While Merc has doubled the India assembly capacity to 20,000 units per annum to manufacture the GLA entry SUV in India, amidst all the fanfare, a fleet of easy to maintain and fuel efficient cars will enter the Indian roads. The recent ban on the diesel vehicles was a much needed step in curbing pollution. Leveraging on that development Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. is planning to introduce electric and hybrid technologies to India. This will have a significant environmental impact with considerable reduction in air pollution.
Challenges in Automobile Industry
These developments call for earnest reforms in the emerging automobile segment. With advancements in the automobile sector, Indian companies need to work on crucial factors like:
- Impact on time to market
- Capitalising on manpower and money
- Shorten the product life cycle with optimal development
- A collaborative platform where a vehicle is designed and conceptualised to create a magnificent unique piece based social learning of user preferences
- Proven capabilities to capture consumer preferences, simulate/optimize performance, manage cost, weight and compliance, all while fulfilling industry and government requirements.
3D Design Technology for Automobile Designing
To be able to answer these problems and meet requirement of the ever changing consumer and market demands, companies must look to digital manufacturing and adopt 3D design and digital mock-up technology and automobile design technology to:-
- Accelerate innovation to the market with optimised and competitive final product which is also internationally compliant regarding safety, sustainability and other requirements
- Test and validate latest innovative ideas earlier in the development cycle, which saves cost, time and effort
- Get estimates of energy balance and potential impact on the environment
- Analyse environmental impact when integrated in the design environment to help evolve products and enable teams to complete the optimal development decisions
The use of 3D design and digital mock-up technology has made product conceptualisation, testing and implementation better managed and immaculate. Apart from the obvious gain on time, 3D design and digital mock-up technology offers precise and accurate designing techniques which results in a product with no room for errors. Creation of complete virtual product prototypes in full detail, to simulate functions, analyse performance and anticipate interactions among different components will ensure the final product is error free.
Companies are now implementing a PLM strategy to help leverage the power of this technology where 3D design data integrates the entire manufacturing process – spanning production, maintenance and recycling. The user feels more involved with features that allow him to virtually optimise features, identify and eliminate malfunctions or production errors prior to any physical build. 3D design innovation helps the industry adopt and transform for reaping benefits of making transition from 2D drawings to immersive real time visualisation and 3D PLM. With induction of 3D technology advancement, products reach the markets 30% faster than traditional methodologies. With this transition, more time can be invested in developing innovative designs, ultimately boosting a company’s competitive edge and customer loyalty.
In conclusion it is safe to say that Optimal Product design with 3D technology for Automobile design Engineering will help in unifying projects in a global platform that shares common product data and information across the enterprise, re-use of content from previous designs becomes much more possible. There is no need to re-invent the wheel, as the design data, no matter where it originated, is now part of a single source of truth. Successful enterprises today recognise digital 3D design content as their key manufacturing asset, using a 3D collaborative environment as the natural vehicle to leverage this value. Digitisation creates the ability to store, harvest and continually build upon an existing wealth of product-related information.
