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Harley-Davidson Uses High-Tech Tools to Create First Electric Bike

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When you think of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, often referred to as “hogs,” its iconic, rumbling sound is often the first thing that comes to mind. The company at one point famously sought to trademark its bikes’ distinctive sound.

It sounds this way because of its unique two-cylinder, v-twin engine design. The engine has a single pin connecting the pistons, originally done to reduce manufacturing costs. To make this unique configuration work the spark plugs were positioned in a 45° arc. So after the first cylinder fires, there is 315° of rotation before the second cylinder fires, and then 405° until the first fires again, and so on, and so on, giving the non-symmetrical distinct potato-potato-potato sound.

Owners love that sound, which sets them apart from the rest of the pack of motorcycle enthusiasts. Imagine their collective horror then when Harley-Davidson announced the debut of its first electric motorcycle prototype, called Project LifeWire, which touts zero emissions.

When the company recently released a teaser video that showed the bike blazing down Route 66, the sounds emitted more closely resembled the sound of a turbine. Response has understandably been mixed among die-hard Harley fans. The company is seeking to attract the novice rider, hoping the lack of a clutch and gears will be less intimidating to newbies.

The LiveWire boasts a 74-horsepower (hp) motor, edging out that of the 60-hp Prius, and according to specs the bike can go 53 miles between charges and takes just 3.5 hours to charge on a 220-Volt outlet. Performance wise, the bike tops out at 92 mph, not bad for a battery-powered bike.

Harley-Davidson's LiveWire electric motorcycle has a 74-hp motor and can go up to 92 mph with zero emissions.
Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire electric motorcycle has a 74-hp motor and can go up to 92 mph with zero emissions.

Company deploys high-tech tools to design new bike

Though not everyone has jumped on board the all-electric and hybrid trends in vehicle design, it does show that Harley has one keen eye on the future and will not left in a cloud of dust when the transportation industry–through necessity–eventually moves away from internal combustion engines (ICE).

In order to accomplish this rather Herculean task, Harley-Davidson’s design team started from scratch, using the latest in design, prototyping and manufacturing technology. In order to meet demanding production schedules that determine the eventual success of any new product, the company leaned heavily on CAD software for design and FEA software for testing.

The company used PTC’s Pro/ENGINEER (now Creo/Parametric) to design the new bike and finite element analysis (FEA) software to conduct virtual testing on the design before any actual parts were machined or prototyped.

The FEA analysis enabled the designers to conduct design optimization studies to determine the optimum weight versus structural strength and durability. Designers also advanced wire routing software and visualization tools to evaluate the design prior to prototyping.

Harley-Davidson uses 3D printer to create prototype parts

Prior to machining and fabrication, some of the parts for LiveWire were 3D printed in order to validate the tolerances, proportions, and other attributes. Harley-Davidson has several 3D printers that run around the clock to validate designs for both ICE bikes and for other projects like LiveWire.

The 3D printed parts used for validation are full-sized 1:1 scale parts, not shrunk down models. This prototyping process allowed everyone involved in the design and manufacturing process to test, fit, hold, and see parts of the bike in proper proportion.

Once a design was completed, the company’s design team used computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software to manufacture it. The entire concept-to-prototype process took only four months.

Today, the bike can been seen throughout the country on Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire Experience Tour. The question of whether Harley-Davidson will begin cranking our production models of the concept bike is unknown, but it certainly shows the company has an eye out for the future.

What do you think about an electric Harley? Share your comments below.

Barb Schmitz

The failed promise of parametric CAD, final chapter: A viable solution

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Model reuseWhat is the failed promise of parametric CAD? In short, model reuse.

It’s a lot more difficult than it ought to be, for a variety of reasons. Several months back, I wrote a series of articles discussing those reasons, as well as some of the solutions that have come up over the years.  What was missing from the series was a final chapter; a detailed description of what could prove to be a viable solution to problems with model reuse: the resilient modeling strategy.

The resilient modeling strategy (RMS) is the brainchild of Richard “Dick” Gebhard. I wrote about Dick last June, in the article A Resilient Modeling Strategy. He’s a low-key guy with deep experience and serious expertise in the practical use of MCAD software. Over his career in CAD, he’s been a reseller for CADKEY, Pro/E, and most recently, Solid Edge.

RMS is a best practice for creating CAD models that are stable and easily reusable (even by inexperienced users.)  It can be learned and easily used by typical CAD users, it preserves design intent in models, and provides a mechanism by which managers or checkers can quickly validate a model’s quality.

Resilient Modeling Strategy

When Dick first started thinking about the concepts that make up the resilient modeling strategy, it was natural that it was in the context of showing the advantages of Synchronous Technology (The Siemens PLM brand name for its version of direct modeling.) In our discussions about RMS over the last year or so, I pointed out that, while I thought that RMS did indeed demonstrate the benefits of hybrid history/direct modeling in Solid Edge, for it to be taken seriously, and not be unfairly dismissed as a marketing initiative for Solid Edge, it needed to work with a wide variety of MCAD tools. I think Dick got where I was coming from, because he’s continued to refine and generalize RMS, with feedback from users of a number of MCAD systems.

In its current incarnation, RMS works particularly well with Solid Edge, as might be expected, but also works very well with Creo, NX, CATIA, and IronCAD (all of which are hybrid history/direct systems.) Further, with a few modifications, it can provide compelling value with SolidWorks, Inventor, and Pro/E (all of which are primarily history-oriented systems.)

It’s significant that RMS is also free to use. While Dick is available to provide presentations, seminars, and training, he has not attempted to patent, or keep as trade secrets, the underlying concepts of RMS. (He does claim a trademark on the term “Resilient Modeling Strategy,” which means that organizations offering commercial training on RMS will need to get Dick’s OK to use the term.)

Dick has posted an introductory presentation on RMS at resilientmodeling.com. While the entire presentation is 20 minutes long, the first 3-1/2 minutes cover the problems that people invariably experience when reusing or editing history-based CAD models. Watching that much will likely convince you to watch the rest.

On Wednesday, November 20, at 10:00 AM PST, Dick will be hosting a webinar on RMS. It’s scheduled to last just 30 minutes, with the emphasis on content, not hype. If you’re a serious CAD user or a CAD manager (or, for that matter, you work for an MCAD developer), it’ll be well worth your time to attend.

TL;DR: Resilient Modeling Strategy is a best practice for creating high quality reusable 3D MCAD models. It works with many CAD systems, it’s easy to learn and use, and it’s free. Big payoff for MCAD users. 

Presentation at resilientmodeling.com

Register for Nov 20 webinar on Resilient Modeling

 

 

 

The failed promise of parametric CAD part 5: A resilient modeling strategy

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bamboo-gardenThe model brittleness problem inherent with parametric feature-based modeling is a really big deal. And it’s something, honestly, that I don’t have a great answer for. I’ve even asked a few power users who I know, and their answers seemed to involve a bit of hand-waving, and a reference to having lots of experience.

While best practices are a potentially good step forward, they need to be straightforward enough that mere mortals (as opposed to power users) can follow them.

Around Christmas last year, I got a call from Richard Gebhard, an engineer’s engineer, who has made his living selling CAD, and training people to use it (including more than his fair share of power users), for longer than he would like me to admit. (I’m pretty sure I’ve been in the CAD industry longer than him, though.) Richard told me he had something he wanted to show me, and if I’d take the time to meet him, he’d buy me lunch.

What Richard showed me was a way of creating and structuring CAD models that made a lot of sense. It not only reduced parent-child dependencies, but it made them more predictable. And, more importantly, it made it a lot easier for a mere mortals to scan through the feature tree, and see if there were any grues (it’s a technical term. Feel free to look it up.)

Over the next several months, we had lunch several times. I made suggestions. He rejected some, accepted some, and thought about others. At the same time, he was bouncing his ideas off several of his best power users (including his son). By a couple of months ago, he had refined his system to the place where it would work impressively well with nearly any parametric feature-based CAD system. So, he went to work finalizing his presentation.

I had mentioned that Delphi, by patenting some of the elements of horizontal modeling, limited the number of people who could benefit from it. (Worse for them, they patented it, then filed bankruptcy. That didn’t help much.) Richard’s goal wasn’t to monetize his process. His goal was to evangelize it. To help CAD users—both power users and mere mortals—to get their jobs done better.

Richard and I had talked, over time, about what he should call this process. At first, I liked the word “robust.” In computer science, it is the ability of a system to cope with errors during execution. In economics, it is the ability of a model to remain valid under different assumptions, parameters and initial conditions. Those are good connotations. But, then I thought of one of my favorite examples of robustness. The first time I visited Russia, I noticed that the apartment buildings were built of thick poured concrete. Very robust. And nearly impossible to remodel.

Richard’s system wasn’t robust. It was resilient. So, he has named it the Resilient Modeling Strategy. RMS.

So far, I’ve written over 2,600 words, to provide some background on the problems of parametric modeling, and some of the solutions that have been offered over the years. But, after all that, I’m not going to tell you anything more about RMS. At least, not yet.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 26, Richard will present RMS for the first time ever, at Solid Edge University, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His presentation will start at 9:00AM local time, and will be in room 6 of the convention center. If you’re there, put it on your calendar. If not, you’ll need to wait until Richard gets back to Phoenix, and I publish a follow-up post.

RMS is not anything difficult, or fundamentally new. It’s just an elegant distillation of best practices, designed to work with nearly any parametric CAD system, and simple enough that it doesn’t get in the way.  It’ll help you make better CAD models faster.

The failed promise of parametric CAD part 4: Going horizontal

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In the early 90s, Ron Andrews, a senior product designer at Dephi’s Saginaw Steering Systems Division, became fed-up with the difficulties of editing parametric CAD models. So, he and a team of his colleagues, including Pravin Khurana, Kevin Marseilles, and Diane Landers, took on a challenge of trying to find a solution.

They came up with an interesting concept that they called horizontal modeling. Here’s a description of it from their patent abstract:

“Disclosed is a horizontal structure method of CAD/CAM manufacturing where a base feature is provided and one or more form features added to it to form a model. The form features are added in an associative relationship with the base feature, preferable a parent child relationship, but are added in a way as to have substantially no associative relationships with each other. The result is a horizontally-structured Master Process Model where any one form feature can be altered or deleted without affecting the rest of the model. Extracts are then made of the Master Process Model to show the construction of the model feature by feature over time. These extracts are then used to generate manufacturing instructions that are used to machine a real-world part from a blank shaped like the base feature.”

Here’s a picture that makes it clearer:

Horizontal Modeling

The simplest explanation I can give for it is this: You create a base feature, and bunch of datum (working) planes. You attach all the child features to those datum planes. Viola: no parent-child problems.

I admit that I’m not going to do justice to horizontal modeling in this conversation. There’s actually quite a bit to it, and it makes a lot of sense when coupled with computer-aided process planning (CAPP.)

Horizontal modeling has a handful of problems. First, it does a pretty good job of killing the possibility of having design intent expressed in the feature tree. Next, it works better with some CAD systems than others. (When horizontal modeling was in the news, SolidWorks had a problem managing the normals on datum planes, so it didn’t work too well.) The deadliest problem is that Delphi got a bunch of patents on the process, then licensed it to some training companies. From what I can see (and I may be wrong), none of these training centers offer horizontal modeling classes any more.

While, technically, you can’t use horizontal modeling without a patent license from Delphi, the concepts at its core are fairly similar to things that CAD users have been doing for years. A few years ago, Josh Mings posted on a couple of online forums that “Horizontal Modeling is just one word for it, you may also know it as Skeleton Modeling, Tier modeling, Sketch Assembly modeling, CAD
Neutral Modeling, or Body Modeling.” (It’s actually two words for it, but I get his point.)

Horizontal modeling is not a silver bullet solution for the problems inherent in parametric feature-based CAD. It’s just a best practice—a strategy for getting around the problems. It seems to be headed in the right direction, but it suffers from the complexity that comes from trying to fix too many problems at once.

Next: A Resilient Modeling Strategy

The failed promise of parametric CAD part 3: The direct solution

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Pull-PushDirect modeling—a syncretic melding of concepts pioneered by CoCreate, Trispectives, Kubotek (and many others)–has shown the most promise to cure the parametric curse.

Direct modeling is today’s hot CAD technology. PTC, Autodesk, Siemens PLM, Dassault (CATIA, but not so much SolidWorks), IronCAD, Kubotek, Bricsys, SpaceClaim (and certainly some other companies I’ve forgotten) all have their own unique implementations of it.

The common thread in direct modeling is to use standard construction techniques when modeling, and feature inferencing (or recognition) when editing. It’s easier said than done. It’s taken about 35 years of industry research to get to the place we are today—where you can click on a face of a model, and the system will recognize that you’re pointing to a feature that has some semantic value. And that’s not even considering the tremendous amount of work that has been required by legions of PhD mathematicians to develop the math that lets you push or pull on a model face, and have the system actually edit the geometry it in a useful manner.

For the CAD software, figuring out which way to edit a selection is almost a mind reading trick: A user clicks and drags on a part of a model. What would they like to happen? In some cases it’s easy: Drag once face of a rectangular block, and the system will just make it longer or shorter. But if the block is full of holes, bosses, and blends, it becomes a lot more complicated. What should the system do if you drag a face so far back that it consumes another feature, and then pull it back to where it was? Should the consumed feature be lost forever, or should the system remember it in some way, so it can be restored?

There are no right answers. It seems that no two direct modeling systems handle the decision of what is a “sensible” edit in the same way.

While direct modeling absolutely solves the model brittleness problem inherent with parametrics, it does it by simply not using parametrics. Even with hybrid parametric/direct CAD systems, the answer to the parametric curse is still to not use parametrics when you don’t need to.

The solution of “use direct modeling when you can, and learn to live with parametric hassles when you can’t” just isn’t very satisfying to me.

Next: Going horizontal

The failed promise of parametric CAD part 2: The problem is editing

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ErasermIn the previous post, I wrote about the failed promise of parametric CAD: problems such as parent-child dependencies and unwanted feature interactions, coupled with no easy way to either prevent, or check for them.

The difference between modeling and editing in a parametric CAD system is simply the difference between creating things from scratch, and modifying things you’ve already created. The distinction may seem academic, but it is only when editing that parent-child dependencies are a potential problem.

Consider a scenario, of creating a parametric part—one that you’ve worked out in your head pretty well ahead of time—where you start from scratch, modeling sequentially, and spending all your time working on the most recent feature without needing to go back to edit upstream features.

In that context, the model’s parent-child dependencies would exist, but would be benign. They’d never get in your way. That is, until you went back to edit the part.

In most cases, people don’t build models from scratch without periodically going back to adjust earlier features from time to time. In that process, they’ll catch, and be able to deal with, some of the dependencies. But not likely all, or even most, of them.

I’ve heard experienced CAD people use an interesting term for models with hidden and untested parent-child dependencies: Parts from hell. When you’re trying to modify them, you never know when a small change might cause them to completely fall apart. I think a better, more descriptive, term is brittle: Hard, but liable to break or shatter easily.

This also suggests a descriptive term for CAD models which are not liable to break or shatter easily: resilient.

I’ve only ever seen one group of users who could consistently create complex yet resilient parametric parts models from scratch: PTC application engineers from the early to mid-1990s. Of course, they could only do it during customer benchmarks, with parts they’d practiced ahead of time, where they had worked-out and memorized all the steps, and where they had a good idea of the parameter ranges. Even then, if you were to ask them to change a dimension that would cause a topological change, the models might unceremoniously blow up.

Not to paint too bleak a picture, there are certainly CAD power users who have the skills to create resilient CAD models. I’ve met more than a few of them: true professionals, who by combining experience, insight, and education, have earned the respect of their peers. They understand how to structure CAD models to avoid any problems with brittleness.

Nah. I’m just messing with you. Power users struggle with this just like us mere mortals. It’s just that their models don’t usually fall apart until you go outside the scope of parametric changes they had anticipated. Give power user’s carefully crafted CAD model to a user who has a black thumb (I’m sure someone comes to mind), and they’ll find ways to blow it up that the power user never imagined.

Next: The direct solution

The failed promise of parametric CAD part 1: From the beginning

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The modern era of 3D CAD was born in September 1987, when Deere & Company bought the first two seats of Pro/Engineer, from the still new Parametric Technology Corporation. A couple of years later, Deere’s Jack Wiley was quoted in the Anderson Report, saying:

“Pro/ENGINEER is the best example I have seen to date of how solid modelers ought to work. The strength of the product is its mechanical features coupled with dimensional adjustability. The benefit of this combination is a much friendlier user interface plus an intelligent geometric database.”

According to Sam Geisberg, the founder of PTC:

“The goal is to create a system that would be flexible enough to encourage the engineer to easily consider a variety of designs. And the cost of making design changes ought to be as close to zero as possible. In addition, the traditional CAD/CAM software of the time unrealistically restricted low-cost changes to only the very front end of the design-engineering process.”

To say Pro/E was a success would be a terrible understatement. Within a few years PTC was winning major accounts from the old-line competitors. In 1992, on the strength of its product, PTC walked away with a 2,000 seat order from Caterpillar that Unigraphics had thought was in the bag.

The secret to Pro/E’s success was its parametric feature-based solid modeling approach to building 3D models. To companies such as Deere and Caterpillar, it offered a compelling vision. Imagine being able to build a virtual CAD model of an engine, and, by changing a few parameters, being able to alter its displacement, or even its number of cylinders. And even if that wasn’t achievable, it would be a great leap forward to just be able to rapidly create and explore design alternatives for parts and assemblies.

Yet, things were not that easy. In 1990, Steve Wolfe, one of the CAD industry’s most insightful observers, pointed out that Pro/E was incapable of making some seemingly simple parametric changes.

Pro/Engineer placed limits on the range of parameters. (A designer could not increase the dimension of L2 to point that L3 vanished.)
Pro/Engineer placed limits on the range of parameters. (A designer could not increase the dimension of L2 to point that L3 vanished.)

David Weisberg, editor of the Engineering Automation Report (and from whose book, The Engineering Design Revolution, I have liberally cribbed for this article), pointed out the fundamental problem with parametrics:

“The problem with a pure parametric design technique that is based upon regenerating the model from its history tree is that, as geometry is added, it is dependent upon geometry created earlier. This methodology has been described as a parent/child relationship, except that it can be many levels deep. If a parent level element is deleted or changed in certain ways it can have unexpected effects on child-level elements. In extreme cases (and sometimes in cases that were not particularly that extreme), the user was forced to totally recreate the model… Some people described designing with Pro/ENGINEER to be more similar to programming than to conventional engineering design.”

Weisberg barely scratches the surface of the issues that can create problems.

In 1991, Dr. Jami Shah wrote an Assessment of Features Technology, for Computer-Aided Design, a journal targeted to people doing research in the field of CAD. He identified that there were problems with features:

“There are no universally applicable methods for checking the validity of features. It is up to the person defining a feature to specify what is valid or invalid for a given feature. Typical checks that need to be done are: compatibility of parent/dependent features, limits on dimension, and inadvertent interference with other features. In a study for CAM-I, Shah et al. enumerated the following types of feature interactions:

  • interaction that makes a feature nonfunctional,
  • non-generic feature(s) obtained from two or more generic ones,
  • feature parameters rendered obsolete,
  • nonstandard topology,
  • feature deleted by subtraction of larger feature,
  • feature deleted by addition of larger feature.
  • open feature becomes closed,
  • inadvertent interactions from modifications.”

The important thing to notice here is that, not only are there multiple failure modes for features, there are also no universal methods for validating features. It’s left up to the user to figure out. And that process, as Weisberg hinted, is much too difficult.

Rebuild Error

Since the early days of Pro/E, a lot of work has been done, both by PTC and other companies in the CAD industry, to improve the reliability and usability of parametric feature-based CAD software. Yet, the problems that Weisberg and Shah identified still exist, and still get in the way of users being able to get the most from their software.

Next: The problem is editing.

 

PTC: The importance of design agility

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Here’s an interesting term: Design agility.

PTC defines it, generally, as “the power to make late-stage design changes quickly and easily .”

They define it more specifically as “the ability to rapidly recognize features and patterns in imported models, enabling seamless modifications; design intelligence for dumb models.”

You might expect that more specific definition from PTC, being that they have software that fits it rather exactly.

Still, I have to give PTC credit: This is a company that was willing to reinvent (and rebrand) its main product line, specifically to enable design agility. Their Creo Parametric software supports a rather interesting form of direct editing (they call it flexible modeling.) It’s quite a good tool when you need to  make late-stage design changes.

PTC just sent me an interesting infographic that reports the results of a study they did on design agility. It’s kind of big, so here is a little image of it. If you click on it, you can download a PDF version that’s actually possible to read.

PTC Creo Design Agility

 

Here’s my summary of the infographic:

  • Projects usually have a lot of unexpected changes, often in late stages.
  • It’s difficult to use CAD models from other systems, or created by other people.

How do you get “design agility?” PTC is happy to tell you their answer, at www.ptc.com/go/agility. As for my answer: It’s complicated. I will tell you what I think a good first step would be:

Use tools that can take advantage of the knowledge and data that you have.

If that’s too obscure, let me put it in the context of CAD:

  • It’s important that your CAD software is able to open and edit the data you have, no matter the source of that data. If you’re fortunate enough to be in a situation where everyone associated with a project is using exactly the same suite of software, of the same version, then you probably don’t need to sweat this too much. But for those of us who live in the real world—where people use a lot of different tools, and interoperability is still a challenge—it can be a big deal.
  • It’s important that you are able to meaningfully edit the CAD data you have, even if you don’t know how it was constructed. To put a finer point on it: what you know is what it looks like, and what you want it to look like; what you often don’t know is how it is structured (e.g., the hidden relationships built into the feature tree.) It’s important that you CAD software allow you to edit the that data, without you needing to take the time to discover and make sense out of its structure.

 

Organic shape modeling with PTC Creo Parametric Freestyle

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There is no standard definition for what an “organic shape” is. Probably the best definition, in the context of CAD, is that it’s a shape that’s a real pain in the neck to model using traditional methods with NURBS surfaces.

Here’s an example. While you could certainly find a way to model this shape with NURBS, and even get the nice G2 continuity shown here, it would definitely fall into the “pain in the neck” category:

Organic shape modeled with PTC Creo Parametric Freestype

There are a number of interesting tools available for doing organic shape modeling. Most, however, don’t use NURBS—they use subdivision (SubD) surfaces. SubD surfaces, though based on the same mathematical underpinnings as NURBS, are quite a bit different. And the process of creating and editing SubD surfaces is quite a bit different too.

The Freestyle extension in PTC’s Creo Parametric 2.0 program is one of the most interesting SubD surface modelers. It’s not only included at no extra charge with the base program, it’s well-integrated with Creo’s parametric modeling capabilities, allowing you to create aesthetic surfaces with SubDs, and precise surfaces (for interfaces) with NURBS.

PTC has recently posted a video that compares using Freestyle SubD surfaces in Creo Parametric 2.0 with NURBS surfaces in Pro/E Wildfire 5.0:

While it’s likely that PTC is trying to encourage their Pro/E users to upgrade to Creo, the video really highlights the difference in modeling methodology using SubD surfaces versus NURBS surfaces. It’s worth a watch, even if you’re not a Pro/E or Creo user, because it shows what can be done with SubD surfaces. If you do any kind of aesthetic surface design, you want SubDs.

 

How Whirlpool uses PTC CAD and PLM technology

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Whirlpool Corp's Maytag Maxima seriesHome appliances aren’t what they used to be. Consider, for example, washers and dryers. At this week’s PlanetPTC conference, Fred Bellio, CIO of Whirlpool’s Global Product Organization, and Jeff Burk, Director of Whirlpool’s Constellation Program Management Office, described some of the complexities of his company’s Maytag Maxima line of washers and dryers. Washers and dryers from 50 years ago (when my mother was doing the family’s laundry) were mostly mechanical, with an electric drive motor, a timer, and a few switches, solenoids and relays. The Maxima line are about one-third mechanical, one-third electrical/electronic, and one-third software.

Who would have guessed that a clothes washer could have a million lines of software source code, and use WI-fi for remote diagnostics (and even electrical load shedding?)

Whirlpool is the world’s #1 major appliance company, with $19 billion in revenue, and around 70,000 employees. Its products are developed globally, and sold in over 170 countries. While it may not face the same challenges as large automotive or aerospace companies, that doesn’t mean that it’s got things easy when it comes to product development.

Whirlpool’s PLM strategy

To continue to be competitive in the appliance business, Whirlpool needs to implement a top-notch product development process. The Whirlpool program chartered to deliver that process is code named Constellation.

Constellation’s goals are to:

  • Leverage Whirlpool’s global footprint and scale,
  • Enable end‐to‐end lean product development,
  • Enhance collaboration across functions, geographies, & supply chain, and,
  • Provide a real time single source of product information.

Whirlpool PLMThe Constellation program provides Whirlpool with a year-by road-map for implementing PLM technology. This year there are projects related to CAD, core PLM, design quality, cost management, product & portfolio management, service, strategic sourcing, and product quality. It’s not a trivial amount of work. (You can look at Whirpool’s PlanetPTC presentation on Constellation here.)

Ultimately, the benefits Whirlpool hopes to gain include:

  • Shorter product development cycles,
  • More consumer relevant innovation,
  • More product variants from fewer platforms, and,
  • Best cost and best quality position.

Whirlpool and PTC

Whirlpool has been a long-term PTC customer, first using Pro/E in 1986, and standardizing on it in 1990. The company entered into a strategic relationship with PTC in 2010, and currently uses a wide variety of PTC products, including ProE/Creo, Windchill ProjectLink, Windchill PDMLink, WQS, MathCAD, Integrity, PPMLink, Arbortext, Isodraw, and Product View.

My sense is that Whirlpool is a very good example of an ideal PTC customer. Their particular combination of needs are a great match for PTC’s technology. (That may be because PTC pays attention to their customers’ needs when planning their technologies.) Two PTC technologies of special note for Whirlpool are likely to be application lifecycle management (ALM), and service lifecycle management (SLM.)  I’ll be writing more about those two technologies in the near future.

While you could make an argument that Whirlpool could be as well-served by any number of other CAD programs (including SolidWorks, Inventor, and Solid Edge) as they are by ProE/Creo, I think there’s an equally strong (or  stronger) counter-argument. Creo 2.0 includes some capabilities of great value to a company such as Whirlpool. The thing that comes to my mind first is integrated parametric, direct, and organic subdivision surface shape modeling. But the hot ticket is the new Creo 2.0 Options Modeler, which, when coupled with Windchill, is the no-brainer choice for building multiple product variants on a single platform.

Even good examples have flaws

Listening to Jeff Burk describe Whirlpool’s Constellation strategy at the PlanetPTC conference, it occurred to me that the company does seem to have a solid grasp on where it’s going with PLM. I’d expect this: Bellio was the PLM Practice Director at Mercury Marine’s PLM Services group (a company that Siemens PLM highlighted at their recent customer conference.) He also worked in PLM strategy and deployment at Bombardier—and aerospace is where the rubber meets the road for PLM (to strain a metaphor.) Burk has 25 years at Whirlpool, and knows what makes the company tick.

Still, I was curious: Whirlpool has been using Pro/E for 26 years. Do they have the CAD portion of their PLM strategy down? I asked Bellio and Burk about three product design-centric best practices that are generally thought to make a big difference in time to market, cost, and quality: systems engineering, model-based development (e.g., no drawings), and up-front CAE.

Bellio and Burk agreed that each of these are of real value, and that Whirlpool is very interested in them. But, Whirlpool isn’t doing any of them yet.

Why? Start with model-based development: (MBD): It’s simply difficult to change from a drawing-centric to a model-centric culture. Even if good software tools for doing 3D GD&T are available (and they are available for ProE/Creo, both from PTC, and from third-parties such as Sigmetrix), engineers are comfortable with drawings, and aren’t inclined to change, if they can help it. The only industries in which there is widespread adoption of MBD are aerospace and, to a lesser degree, automotive. (This will change over time: MBD is a hot industry trend.)

Similarly, implementing systems engineering and up-front CAE require cultural and process changes that are not natural for CAD users (and particularly ProE users) who’ve invested a lot of time and effort in learning how to do it the way they’re doing it now. You can’t just “install” these practices in a product development process, and expect everyone to jump into using them.

This stuff takes time, and commitment

Looking at Whirlpool’s example, I wonder: do any of PTC’s customers take “full advantage” of all (or even most) of the technology that PTC has to offer? I suspect the answer is “no.”

As a start, PTC offers a lot of technology. A lot of it overlaps with technology offered by competitive companies—and many customers use a mix of tools from a number of suppliers.

Yet, beyond issues of scale, the process of implementing PLM in a company, whether small or large, takes time and commitment, no matter which technology suppliers you use.   There is no magic bullet that will make the process easy.  My sense is that the folks at PTC are focused on doing what they can to make the process easier.  While I still think PTC has a long way to go in making their technology more accessible for non-experts, I’ve seen enough progress that I’m encouraged.

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