Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division and a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services, announced that its technology will help automakers design and validate plants to support flexible manufacturing and drive innovation into vehicles to meet the new, stricter Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard of at least 35 mpg by 2020.

 

This month, key industry leaders will gather at SAE World Congress to discuss some of the critical issues facing automotive manufacturers, including new pressures to bring fuel-efficient vehicles to market at an accelerated pace to meet the more aggressive CAFE standard, a 40 percent increase passed by Congress in December 2007.

 

“To achieve the new CAFE standards, automakers will need to re-tool manufacturing facilities and make them much more flexible to accommodate the significant increase in variation of powertrains and the trend toward more models on fewer platforms,” said Dave Taylor, senior director, Automotive Industry Marketing, Siemens PLM Software. “Increasing collaboration between manufacturing engineering and product development will be critical in helping engineers develop vehicles that can be built in the same plant. Siemens PLM Software is dedicated to helping the automotive industry fulfill its commitment to the development of next-generation green vehicles by delivering software solutions that help our customers address these stricter requirements.”

 

Siemens PLM Software’s technology provides an integrated environment for the development, management and simulation of vehicle platforms, model variants, manufacturing processes and plants. By integrating information about the product and the manufacturing processes, companies can drive knowledge about manufacturing best-practices into the early phases of product development. This helps engineers and designers understand what capabilities exist in manufacturing so that vehicles can be designed to leverage those existing capabilities. Simple constraints such as common lifting points can be defined by manufacturing for product development, helping companies define a portfolio of products that can be manufactured in the same plant.

 

Automotive suppliers and manufacturers possess a tremendous amount of information, which needs to be visible to all departments across an organization. Having one single source of product and process knowledge enables global engineering teams to seamlessly integrate all aspects of a project and work together to optimize product development and manufacturing.

 

Teamcenter software, Siemens PLM Software’s flagship digital lifecycle management solution and the world’s most widely used PLM portfolio, serves as a manufacturer’s information backbone. Teamcenter manages all product related data and makes it instantly available throughout an entire organization, helping to integrate manufacturing with design, and enable flexible manufacturing.

 

“With all of the increasingly complex components that are involved in the design and development of a vehicle, it is no longer effective to work in a manual environment. Automakers must have the information technology tools to connect the virtual world to the physical world, and we’ve integrated the tool sets to do just that,” added Taylor.

 

Tecnomatix software, Siemens PLM Software’s digital manufacturing solution, helps automakers evaluate manufacturing alternatives by enabling them to better understand plant capabilities through simulation, and by facilitating increased planning accuracy and efficiency.

 

Siemens PLM Software is a leading provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services for the automotive and transportation industry. Fourteen out of the top sixteen automotive OEMs in the world use Siemens PLM Software technology to enable their business process improvement initiatives. From early portfolio planning through product development, manufacturing and product obsolescence, leading automakers and their suppliers rely on Siemens PLM Software for PLM technology. The automotive industry has long understood and consistently used PLM technology to cut development costs, speed time-to-market, remain competitive and drive top-line growth.

 

Siemens PLM Software is a mission-critical partner with many automotive and transportation companies, providing PLM solutions to enable key business process improvement initiatives, such as: commonization and re-use, change management, global engineering, knowledge-driven automation and supply chain integration.