Schuler - Boosting collaborative engineering with CATIA V5 and ENOVIA VPLM

Schuler Objectives

• Transforming the value chain into a virtual enterprise
• Implementing standards-based solutions built to support global, enterprise-wide deployments
• Managing globally dispersed programs, project teams and connected activities
• Optimizing industry best practices and process excellence

Company Overview
Founded in 1839 as a metal fitter’s shop, Germany’s Schuler AG has become a leading global manufacturer of mechanical and hydraulic metal forming products, systems and services, with fiscal 2005-06 sales of €560 million and a workforce of 3,600. At the forefront of developing transfer and servo presses widely used across the automotive industry, Schuler pioneered hydro-forming technology for contouring tubes in the 1990s. Its presses are also used in minting and solid forming. Schuler has six forming system sites in Germany, and one each in Brazil and China, with advanced technology sites in Germany and the U.S.
In 2007, Schuler acquired Müller Weingarten and will merge the two companies. Together, Schuler and Müller Weingarten are already the technological and global market leader in metal forming technology. They have a joint world market share of approximately 35 percent, are represented in over 20 countries, and generate combined sales revenues of over €900 million.

Business Challenges
Schuler’s number one business challenge is to satisfy the ever-changing requirements of its customers such as automotive manufacturers. These companies work in a volatile market where investments in new presses are closely related to winning new orders. The Schuler development organization needs to be extremely flexible and responsive to customization requirements, yet still meet very demanding lead times.
To maintain its reputation as the undisputed leader in the metal forming sector, Schuler must constantly demonstrate its commitment to innovation, product quality, and customer service. This means reacting quickly to new market opportunities and delivering the technologically superior products its customers expect.
“At Schuler, we hire the best engineers. They need the best tools. That is why we chose IBM PLM solutions, developed by Dassault Systèmes.”
Joachim Beyer, Member of the Executive Board, Schuler
As a global player, the Schuler enterprise extends over a number of work sites, each handling different product parts and processes. The presses themselves are huge, custom-tailored products comprising more than 30,000 parts with a lifetime of up to 30 years, presenting enormous data management and coordination challenges. This complexity requires real-time data sharing and decision making among engineers, suppliers, and customers. Design changes must be propagated across the extended enterprise so both upstream and downstream actors are aware of updates.
Providing global development teams with the right tools for concurrent engineering and maximum leveraging of worker knowledge and skills is a business necessity. To increase efficiencies, streamline collaboration, and reduce engineering costs across the entire Schuler organization, the company needed to standardize its engineering processes, practices and infrastructures, enabling staff, suppliers and customers to work in a common environment.

Solution
To standardize engineering processes and streamline collaborative development, Schuler decided to adopt a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) strategy and provide its R&D department with the best solution to achieve these goals. Whereas development had previously been carried out with 2D tools and paper-based processes, Schuler opted for 3D model based design in 1996 and implemented CATIA V4 and ENOVIA VPM to achieve greater efficiency and integration.
From 2003-2006, the company rapidly and successfully rolled out a complete IBM PLM solution, developed by Dassault Systèmes, migrating all CATIA V4 data and CADAM drawings, and deploying CATIA V5 and ENOVIA VPLM across its development organization. Starting from one location and five users, PLM is now used globally at six sites by a total of 250 users.
“PLM changes the way you do things. It is a philosophy not just a tool. ”
Walter Knoblauch, PLM Manager, Schuler

CATIA V5 for 3D product modeling
The company uses CATIA V5 to develop 3D digital models of new presses and V5 DMU (digital mockup) for rapid testing and validation. Each new press involves 10-15 in-house engineers and substantial development savings are realized by sharing part weld information.
Designers are also more productive using CATIA V5 because Catalogues and Power Copy features allow them to store and reuse standard parts and best practices to avoid costly rework. Light geometric representations (mockups) are used to share design information seamlessly with suppliers and customers via the open standard 3D XML format.

ENOVIA VPLM for global product data management
ENOVIA VPLM was selected because Schuler realized that the only way to achieve greater efficiency was to standardize processes for sharing product data, creating and modifying designs, and managing work-in process information. Having a single source of product data allowed Schuler stakeholders to collaborate across the multi-site enterprise and maximize the benefits of concurrent engineering.
Schuler also needed a product lifecycle management solution that interfaced seamlessly with other enterprise applications, facilitating the flow of information and updates among 130 concurrent engineering and business end-users. For these reasons, ENOVIA VPLM was considered an absolute prerequisite to any PLM implementation.

SIMULIA for realistic simulation
Schuler uses both CATIA V5 and ABAQUS analysis applications. Part of Dassault Systèmes SIMULIA solution, CATIA V5 and ABAQUS analysis products enable Schuler engineers to improve product performance, reduce the number of physical prototypes, and drive innovation.
“As an engineering manager, I have to switch rapidly between multiple problems. With PLM, I have a better understanding of each technical issue as it arises.This helps me to control the entire engineering process more effectively.”
Martin Schmeink, Engineering Manager, Automotive Business Unit, Schuler

Results
Faster product delivery
Using PLM, Schuler has reduced the design time of presses by 20% from five to four months. Different units can handle different parts and processes such as welding from anywhere concurrently. This accelerates operational and decision-making capabilities, and improves quality. The resulting flexibility has increased capacity to meet tighter deadlines. Another recent success was the simultaneous development of three new servo presses.
“In January 2005, we managed to reduce press delivery times from 12 to 9 months,” said Martin Schmeink, Engineering Manager, Automotive Business Unit.

Enhanced product quality
Using CATIA V5, Schuler analysis engineers can deliver the results of a finite element modeling (FEM) part analysis 25% more quickly. This time savings enables engineers to further improve the part for welding. “FEM analysis comes back so quickly now that we can optimize the part because it’s not as far along in the process. The result is a 5% improvement in welded part quality.
“As an engineer, you have a feeling in your stomach if your design is going in the right direction or not. With PLM, we can check designs from the different groups earlier in the process and more efficiently, and this improves product quality. PLM confirms your gut feeling,” said Schmeink.

Improved standardization
Schuler’s swift and successful migration from V4 to V5 is enabling the company to fulfill its longstanding goal of standardizing development processes across the extended enterprise. By communicating product data using digital mockups (DMU) and 3D XML, design challenges can be quickly solved, solutions optimized and best practices shared, enabling staff to move from site to site with zero learning curve.

PLM Key Benefits
-20% Product design time
Engineering design time of presses cut from five to four months
+5% Quality of large welded parts
Improved speed of FEM analysisresults in better designs

+240% Faster visualization of assemblies
Virtual product assembly time cut from three working days to one hour
“PLM encourages standardized practices,” said Knoblauch. “Now that our engineers share the same guidelines and methodologies, we are expecting big improvements with repeat orders.”
PLM also makes it easier to centrally manage and standardize references for materials, parts, and bills-of-material (BOM), further streamlining sourcing and coordination across multiple suppliers and customers. As a result, the company as a whole can depend on the same approved resources when work-load availability shifts from one site to another.

Optimization of resources
Improvements in the product design process using PLM has enabled Schuler to deliver its designs faster with less staff. “We didn’t replace the people who retired in the automotive department, which went from 60 to 50 employees. Despite that drop, we’ve improved the timely delivery of products from 70 to 90%, and that’s with fewer and younger engineers,” said Schmeink.
In addition, accessing a common database in ENOVIA VPLM means faster visualization of assemblies. “In the past, parts designed in different sites and designed in different CAD systems were stored in separate databases. The process of assembling the virtual product could take up to three days. Now we can do it in an hour,” said Dieter Laube, PLM Administrator, Schuler.

Greater innovation
By leveraging the company’s existing capital using PLM, Schuler has been able to diversify rapidly into new product areas, firstly in the area of servo presses. It is also leveraging existing engineering assets to develop metal forming solutions for the emerging large windmill market. With PLM, engineers can explore and test more design and engineering possibilities, capture engineering knowledge and reuse optimized products and part to jump start new projects. This speeds up the R&D process and lowers innovation overheads, reducing the time and cost of taking new products to market.
“We made the right decision in switching to PLM. It motivates us to improve our processes, enables us to make better engineering decisions and resource allocation, and helps us to explore new directions for innovation in the future.”
Dieter Laube, PLM Administrator, Schuler

Future
“Our immediate task is to drive PLM-based collaboration further through the company and out into the extended enterprise. Our goal is to bring our Brazil site on board through effective database replication. And we intend to incorporate our Embedded Systems and Numerical Command units into the value chain. We also wish to leverage the opportunity offered by the Web, using 3DLive,” said Knoblauch. “This will mean end-to-end viewing access via 3D to every customer, sales and service department, and ultimately support our target of reducing the whole delivery lifecycle time by 20%.”