In the area of car body systems development, automotive companies are realizing the value of an end-to-end, integrated lifecycle approach to the overall process, from vehicle concept, through engineering development and production. The sequential approach to vehicle development — where body styling, structural engineering and development, and manufacturing processes are separate functional disciplines as well as organizations that hand off each step of the process — is giving way to a more integrated approach. Concurrent engineering methods have helped to merge concept, development and manufacturing processes over the years, but the vision going forward is a systems-driven approach for automotive body engineering and manufacturing. The systems-driven approach brings all aspects of car design together in a holistic fashion and makes it easy to trace requirements — whether customer, regulatory, legal, or others — throughout the design process with constant validation.

To help you achieve an integrated automotive body systems development process, Siemens PLM Software offers a set of design/build applications and solutions which enable immediate access to key product information. This helps automotive OEMs and suppliers make smarter product development decisions, leading to better products.

Car Body Styling and Design
A variety of modeling techniques and automotive-specific templates allow car body designers to explore different options rapidly, without feeling limited by the design tool. Examples include B-pillar, glass drop, body side door opening, the use of lightweight materials such as composites, and many others. With the ability to capture knowledge throughout the process and make it available in a digital product development environment, your teams can rapidly capture and create re-usable design and manufacturing elements while they participate in everyday development processes.

Manufacturing Process Management
Automotive manufacturers that are able to implement a manufacturing process management strategy are better able to:

• Account for product to process to equipment completeness
• Quickly identify the impact of changes on the process model, both from within the design function and from within the later manufacturing engineering and production phases
• Capture and re-use best and proven practices on each new program
• Provide high visibility to variations and configurations across different plants, programs, and vehicles, including time-based effectivity
• Support the entire design-to-manufacturing process for lightweight materials, such as composites

Ultimately, manufacturers are in a position to leverage a single source of product and process information or truth across their enterprise for current and future vehicle programs.

Simulation and Validation
Continuous embedded simulation and validation provides you with verification of the methods and resources being selected. Through the use of simulation, engineering studies and what-if analyses are carried out very quickly, easily and at low cost during development and pre-production phases, thereby reducing the need for physical tryouts and ensuring that any required physical tryouts can be executed faster. The process model can easily be shown to others using visual displays of exact operations, resource layout, and their use, resulting in a proven, right-first-time manufacturing plan.

Ultimately, you are in a position to leverage a single source of product and process information across your enterprise for current and future vehicle programs. You are able to respond much more quickly to changing market demands, function efficiently while being geographically dispersed, and collaborate much more effectively in the car body systems design process.