By Sarah Bartash
The automotive and aerospace harness industries are facing new difficulties that call for creative design solutions that mostly rely on efficient E/E co-design and collaboration, as well as the speedy and secure sharing and access of data. Cable and harness designers have to deal with more complicated systems, constrained space, and the increased requirement for lighter materials to increase fuel efficiency. In harsh circumstances, they must also provide excellent performance and dependability. Time-to-market requirements and quickly advancing technology, on the other hand, require designs to be extremely flexible while adhering to strict guidelines and const limitations.
Host Steph Chavez discussed electrical/electronic, or E/E, co-design for cables and harnesses in a recent edition of the podcast “Printed Circuit,” which examines trends, obstacles, and possibilities in the printed circuit engineering sector. In order to further advance design teams’ communication, he invited Erica Van Berkum, Technical Product Manager for Siemens Capital electrical connectivity, to participate in the conversation and share some best practices.
Van Berkum started working as a wire harness designer at Yazaki, the biggest harness provider in the world, more than 20 years ago. She also held a variety of positions in Nissan’s electrical and vehicle program management departments. Van Berkum has been assisting clients in carrying out extensive implementations of Siemens’ integrated electrical software system, Capital, for more than five years. She has most recently served as a representative of the connection domain for the Capital product management team. The requirement for teams to operate in silos is one of the main obstacles faced by electrical or electronic designers, according to Van Berkum. She claimed that as a result, “changes in the design are not as visible, both upstream and downstream.”
For instance, routing, wire length, voltage drop, and other variables are affected when a mechanical engineer moves a connection point to a harness or modifies a component. According to her, “it’s hard to understand how requirements are implemented across different domains like electrical, mechanical, or software, and the information isn’t coming as consistently or as frequently as it should.” “How can you help those teams communicate with each other more effectively? How does the overall performance appear, and how can those cycles be broken down? Overcoming siloed operations is crucial for quality, efficiency, and innovation. Van Berkum stresses the need for proper tools and traceability in E/E system design to adapt to requirements effectively.
Doing architectural trade studies is also crucial since it helps groups comprehend how changes will affect the system. Van Berkum questioned, “How do you propagate and feed those back into the architectural design when implementations are done at the design level?” “And how can that be done earlier in the design process?”
Unfortunately, the speed and efficacy of such communication between engineering domains is hampered by legacy methods to systems design, and change is difficult. Engineers are hesitant to embrace new methods since they have gotten accustomed to their current techniques. Van Berkum stated, “They don’t want to be the guinea pigs, and they don’t want to pay for it.” “No one desires to go first.”
Van Berkum, though, thinks that when the value proposition is obvious, change can occur. She continued, saying that proactive training and pilot programs are helping Siemens’ customers move forward. “If leaders are communicating that change will result in 5–10% growth, and if they communicate they’ll be patient with their team if productivity dips as they adopt a new solution, then success is possible,” she said.
According to Van Berkum, the goal of the automobile, aerospace, and other industries is all the same: to reduce design cycles. “Our design development cycle used to be maybe four to six years for a vehicle design when I first started my career in automotive, and now it’s at about a year and a half to two year,” she remarked. How did that come about? “You need a shorter feedback cycle and a digital twin.”
Siemens offers the ability to lock in client needs and enable cross-domain and cross-disciplinary co-collaboration through the use of a digital thread. Van Berkum stated, “Siemens Capital has a great solution, and what I like about Capital is that it does exist really well and integrate well with other MCAD, ECAD, or PLM systems.” We also offer many well-integrated data connections and bridges to other technologies. Teams may spend less time in the tool and make fewer mistakes by using our solution to replace manual data entry and reuse.
Chavez emphasized that Siemens Capital makes it possible for all parties involved to instantaneously identify modifications to the design, or the possibility of changes, and to respond quickly to those changes. He explained, “You can conduct ‘what if’ scenarios and allow the full team to react instantaneously,” which inspires all of the teams to consider the system as a whole rather than simply their individual components. Additionally, it enhances traceability, allowing teams to maintain a digital record of decisions made and comprehend the rationale behind them.
There are only minor distinctions between automotive and aerospace E/E design when it comes to implementing these best practices, according to Van Berkum. “Whereas automotive design is more compartmentalized, aerospace designers work with massive, extremely long cables,” the speaker stated. Both are trending in the direction of generative design. What can they accomplish that requires less physical labor and is more sophisticated and automatic? How can they repurpose data, too? These are the main issues facing both sectors.
