Case Study
PLM quality foundation improves time to market, reduces nonconformances
Delphi Thermal
Tecnomatix quality management synchronizes quality planning with quality execution across multiple product programs
Leading global supplier to automotive industry
Delphi is a leading global supplier of mobile electronics and transportation systems, including powertrain, safety, steering, thermal, and controls and security systems, electrical/electronic architecture and in-car entertainment technologies. Engineered to meet and exceed the rigorous standards of the automotive industry, Delphi technology is also found in computing, communications, consumer accessories, energy and medical applications.
Delphi is a leading global supplier of mobile electronics and transportation systems, including powertrain, safety, steering, thermal, and controls and security systems, electrical/electronic architecture and in-car entertainment technologies. Engineered to meet and exceed the rigorous standards of the automotive industry, Delphi technology is also found in computing, communications, consumer accessories, energy and medical applications.
Faced with increasing competitive pressures in a contracting automotive market, Delphi Thermal realized that good enough wasn’t going to accomplish its ambitious goals nor satisfy automotive OEMs that are demanding lower cost components with tightening quality requirements. According to Jim Anderson, a senior project engineer for Delphi Thermal, “We’re responding to the increasing pressures to reduce cost, become more productive and maintain our quality by implementing best-in-class technology with a focus on lean re-engineering that enables us to fully leverage a global technology footprint.”
One of the key components of the automotive supplier process is a strict compliance to OEM quality requirements through Production Part Approval Process or PPAP. Missing requirements or providing components that do not conform to quality standards can have a costly and time-consuming impact on production schedules. The problem is compounded with shortened development schedules and the mere fact that delivery acceptance of the component will not be approved until the PPAP milestone is passed.
While Delphi Thermal has been meeting these requirements across multiple product programs for many years, the company, like most manufacturers, has been putting its focus on increasing productivity while maintaining the quality for which it is known.
Rapid change, more complex product requirements and new technologies are increasing the demand for the time, cost and quality resources at the company’s disposal. Knowing that inspection and interpretation of dimensional quality has a direct impact on the company’s PPAP process, Delphi looked to Siemens PLM Software for a solution. “With Tecnomatix’ integration to Teamcenter, we saw the opportunity to more easily propagate standards, re-use best practices and increase the consistency of meeting product quality requirements,” says Anderson.
The cadence of quality
Looking in-depth at the current process flow and the existing technologies involved, Delphi’s objective became clear as the company defined a plan to re-engineer processes and utilize integrated technology to reduce the variation associated with interpretation and inspection of design record requirements.
Understanding where requirements are first documented and ultimately approved in the PPAP process – while analyzing how those requirements were consumed throughout the quality lifecycle – called attention to many opportunities for improvement. Existing processes were disconnected; engineering features on drawings meant that these features had to be manually added to CAD representations; and disconnected data stores meant they likely had to be entered multiple times, increasing the chance for errors. In addition, multiple machines required various programming environments, which meant that results were open to different interpretations that were not easily shared with the various groups involved in the quality lifecycle of planning, execution and analysis.
Looking to Siemens’ Tecnomatix® software quality management solutions, Delphi Thermal saw the ability to streamline the workflow, implement a master model concept and utilize industry standards. In doing so, the company realized the opportunity to drastically reduce product variation, improve the consistency of interpretation, shorten the development time for quality planning and have a positive impact on success rates in PPAP signoff. Anderson notes, “In today’s tough economic times, it is very important to re-use as much as possible in order to be competitive. By utilizing the embedded GD&T in the master model, feature, tolerance and dimensional information does not have to be re-entered into various downstream systems for inspection purposes. This, in combination with standardizing CMM footprints and fixturing, has had a positive impact on time to market.”
A PLM foundation for quality
With a Tecnomatix quality solution for inspection programming and execution built on a Teamcenter® foundation, Delphi Thermal has been able to meet PPAP requirements much more efficiently while increasing its final PPAP acceptance rates. This has a positive impact across multiple domains, but especially in production where delays have a direct impact on profitability.
By implementing Tecnomatix quality management solutions with a focus on process reengineering, Delphi Thermal has improved new product introduction cycle time by defining parallel workflows between design engineering and inspection programming. In design where the master model is defined and validated, the quality engineer can leverage GD&T, dimensions, features and inspection points to greatly simplify inspection programming and change management. These critical-to-quality features are entered once and leveraged through the entire inspection programming, execution and analysis workflows. In addition, because of Siemens PLM Software’s commitment to open standards like Dimensional Measurement Interface Specification (DMIS), a metrology standard developed as a collaborative effort between vendors and Dimensional Metrology Standards Consortium (DMSC) members and I++, the programming and execution efforts for multiple machines are simplified. This reduces training costs and improves inspection results by allowing a single inspection program to run on multiple machines from virtually any vendor. The result: a dramatic positive impact on the consistency of measured data.
With a single, unambiguous source of quality information in place, Delphi Thermal made further improvements to its processes by defining hardware configurations with a minimum machine envelope standard and by implementing a library of standard fixture components. Now Delphi Thermal’s entire dimensional quality approach is common across the enterprise, with GD&T and inspection routines fully associated to the CAD product features. This eliminates manual data entry errors, assures that any downstream process has the information it needs, increases productivity of all disciplines involved in the quality process and greatly improves PPAP acceptance rates, allowing Delphi Thermal to be as productive as possible.
The productivity and quality gains Delphi Thermal has experienced through this combination of business transformation and advanced technology has won the company the Managing Automation Progressive Manufacturing (PM100 Award) for Innovation Mastery for PLM Deployment. “We were excited to hear about the PM100 Award,” says Anderson. “This project served as a model for the proper integration of technology, process re-engineering and our culture of adapting to new, more efficient processes. In fact, demonstration of this process has become a part of our standard presentation during tours of our Technical Center. We have received very positive feedback from prospective new customers.”
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Challenges:
- Fiercely competitive market
- Quality compliance to automotive standards
- Variation associated with interpretation and inspection
Keys To Success:
- Global, common process for inspection and interpretation
- Open, standards-based software technology
- Embedded technology leveraging master model principles
- Single source data management
Results:
- Global standard for inspection, interpretation and access
- Increased productivity and consistency through leveraging master model Product and Manufacturing Information (PMI)
- Eliminated errors through conformance to standards and automated updates
- Reduced time and cost with standard libraries and common interface
Industry:
- Automotive & Transportation
Client's Primary Business:
Delphi Thermal is a global leader in the Automotive Tier 1 industry, providing compressors, heating, ventilating and cooling solutions to major automotive OEMs across the globe.
Solutions/Services:
- Teamcenter
- Tecnomatix
Client Location:
Lockport, New York
United States
"With Tecnomatix integration to Teamcenter, we saw the opportunity to more easily propagate standards, re-use best practices and increase the consistency of meeting product quality requirements."
Jim Anderson
Senior Project Engineer
Delphi Thermal
"The Tecnomatix quality solution has had a significant impact on time-to-market but the bottom line is that the quality of the data is more important than the lead times… we do it simply because it is the right thing to do."
Jim Anderson
Senior Project Engineer
Delphi Thermal