Those challenges leave automotive executives struggling for more effective solutions to confront the business drivers of the industry: competitive price pressure, reduced development cost, and a shortened workflow process. Typical responses include adopting an early styling freeze, leveraging past designs to accelerate engineering, and optimising supply chain outsourcing. Only a blending of technical expertise in the design cycle with competency in manufacturing can ease such `pain points'. True engineering and manufacturing advantage in the automotive sector requires not simply robust point solutions and tailored process implementations, but also a strong emphasis on delivering value.

IBM and software development partner Dassault Systèmes' Catia V5 solutions empower product design, simulation and optimisation to deliver measurable value within this formidable environment. As the product authoring solution within Dassault Systèmes' overall 3D product lifecycle management (PLM) portfolio, Catia V5 enables optimisation of automotive business processes across design engineering, production manufacturing, maintenance, and support, as well as in collaborative workspaces across the supply chain. This is accomplished by sharing a common product, process and resource model. Catia V5's capture and reuse of engineering knowledge leveraged from previous product designs can dramatically shorten the body and powertrain development process, for example. Together, Catia V5's combination of deep functional technology and attention to the expansive automotive workflow attacks the heart of the problems faced by executives seeking to deliver quality and expertise in a shorter period of time and at reduced cost.

IBM and Dassault Systèmes have built upon an extensive presence in the automotive sector in North and South America, Europe and Asia. Recently announced Catia V5 wins include Toyota Motor Corporation, BMW Group, Scania, MAN Nutzfahrzeuge, and the Volvo Group. DH Brown Associates (DHBA) believes that by capitalising on its client partner automotive relationships to deliver advanced automotive process-centric capabilities, IBM and Dassault Systèmes have positioned Catia V5 solutions to claim the title of the consensus leader in automotive product development worldwide.

Today's automotive business drivers

The product development process of automotive design and manufacturing spirals ever higher in sophistication as product complexity grows and worldwide competition tightens with users demanding more customised products. Across the full span of automotive engineering disciplines for conceptual design, styling, body-in-white, powertrain, product structure configurations, detailed design, analysis, and on into manufacturing tooling and assembly, three overpowering business drivers resonate with automotive executives. Their first challenge is to adopt and adjust to an ever-shrinking development cycle. This cycle in turn is driven by worldwide competition while simultaneously dealing with an expanding market demand for customisation. Despite these conflicting priorities, much has been accomplished. Over the past few years, the new product design cycle has moved from over 24 months toward a current target of 18 months, and efforts continue unabated to attain the 'golden fleece' of a 12-month new car design and introduction.

Decision makers look to exploit and reuse existing model and platform designs and to refit in-production subsystems to expedite these compressed schedules.

The challenge of making better, more informed product decisions in complex systems and retaining focus on up-front business specifications to reduce overall cost, size, and power requirements ranks second in the minds of automotive executives. Driven by pressures from both competition and government regulation, streamlining the lengthy decision-making process looks toward capture and reuse of industry knowledge and corporate best practices throughout the entire engineering and production process. Finally, the globalisation of automotive design and manufacturing finds many companies around the world deploying multiple suppliers' drives OEMs (original equipment manufacturers). This trend calls for more effective solutions in managing and collaborating with their supply chains during design and manufacturing planning. Accelerated automotive engineering demands attention to all three business drivers - managing the shortened development cycle, making more effective and timely decisions, and optimising across the full value chain.

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This is a White Paper prepared for IBM and Dassault Systèmes by ADH Brown and Associates. The article has some interesting views on the way the design of the latest generation of motor vehicles is going. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Editor of CG. We invite readers to comment and exchange different points of view regarding those raised in this article.