Daimler’s Indian R&D arm migrates data from Catia V5 to customised Siemens NX

Global automotive giant Daimler has started actively using Siemens software in place of the existing software solution provided by France-based Dassault Systemes to design and maintain datas.

The company’s Indian R&D arm Bangalore-based Mercedes-Benz Research & Development India (MBRDI) has taken the complete task of migrating data from the existing Dassault’s software christened Catia V5 to the customized software – NX – created for Daimler by Siemens. 

The company has been using CAD 2 to design vehicles. For over 25 years, Daimler has been using Computer-Aided Three Dimensional Interactive Application software CATIA from France-based Dassault Systemes, which is considered to be Siemens' arch rival in the automotive software space.

Under CAD, the company uses software to design and engineer three-dimensional parts and simulate their use in vehicles and other processes required for manufacturing activities. Managing this process, from design through engineering and manufacturing is called product life cycle management (PLM).

Now changing its software tool from Catia to NX is in support of Daimler’s future strategy to adopt the new PLM and Product Data Management (PDM) systems, company officials told Autocar Professional.

According to Aadil Rasheed, senior manager of IT Services, MBRDI, the company’s Indian R&D arm has commenced the work of migrating data from Dassault’s Catia V5 software to Siemens NX in 2011 with just eight engineers. Now the Indian R&D arm has involved more than 250 engineers to execute the task.

MBRDI has showcased its software-related skills including its data transfer from Catia V5 to NX at the recently held CeBIT, India’s premium IT and ICT expo in Bangalore. A team of engineers from MBRDI, led by Rasheed, explained that MBRDI is in the process of migrating 15 million objects to the new NX software created by Siemens.

Already MBRDI has migrated around 100,000 objects. MBRDI is the only R&D centre of Daimlder involved in this job and MBRDI’s division in Bangalore is the largest R&D centre of Daimler outside Germany and contributes to various R&D domains and IT engineering.

Currently more than 6,000 engineers working on objects and products for various Daimler business units globally like the bus, truck, van and car divisions are using Catia V5. Now all these engineers will be trained to use NX of Siemens.

According to inside sources in Daimler, the company had reached a level where the benefits of implementing a new system outweigh the complexity of improving an existing one. Hence the migration process has been commenced in 2011. The company has scheduled to finish the goal with the bulk of the migration for cars and vans in 2015. The work related to trucks and buses is expected to be completed in 2016.

MBRDI is the only centre coordinating with all these business units, get data from them, migrate it and send it back to them. For MBRDI, this project christened PLM 2015 is one of the most important and critical projects because it directly impacts the product.

At present, the engineers in MBRDI are involved in migrating data involving complex objects. For an instance, the design of the cylinder head of the vehicle has around 4,000 features. To migrate the data of such cylinder head will consume around 400 hours. On average, each object consumes around 40 hours and migration times ranges between 5 hours to 500 hours depending upon the product. 

By executing the PLM 2015 project, MBRDI is showcasing its R&D strength in the software space and is emerging as an important technical arm of Daimler worldwide.

According to sources in Siemens, Daimler has worked with Siemens’ Teamcenter software for collaborative product data management since the mid-‘90s. With NX CAD software from Siemens, Daimler will implement a computer-based tool for the entire product development process and therefore a solution for collaborative design, engineering- and development work.

According to Siemens, modern vehicle design requires an increasing integration of mechanical, electrical and electronic components with an ever-expanding software ratio. This requires the integration of all of the information associated with mechanical, electrical and software in an integrated platform to allow for collaboration across the full value chain, including suppliers.

Today Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Digital Factory Division, is a world-leading provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software, systems and services with nine million licensed seats and 77,000 customers worldwide. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, Siemens PLM Software helps thousands of companies make great products by optimizing their lifecycle processes, from planning and development through manufacturing and support.