pepper motion GmbH is the first digital OEM to electrify new and used commercial vehicles. Because pepper's conversion projects use existing resources, the vehicles are the most sustainable and energy-efficient in their class. With currently around 110 employees at four locations, pepper ensures an environmentally friendly "second life" for trucks and buses with at least another eight years of use. In addition, high development speeds impress customers worldwide.
"Consistently digital"
For a matching engineering system, the electrifiers looked around thoroughly on the market. "As a highly innovative company, we did not want any of the conventional document-oriented sign systems. Our solutions are forward-looking, and our engineering software should be too. That's why we were looking for a consistently digital system that could also efficiently support the much-cited "functional safety" of ISO 26262 modern mobility concepts," reports Daniel Zimmermann, systems and field engineering expert at pepper. Result of the search: AUCOTEC's Engineering Base Cable (EB) cooperation platform.
Continuously networking
© pepper motion GmbH"EB was able to meet all our demanding requirements and still requires relatively little training," praises Zimmermann, for whom the consistency of the platform is particularly important: "We use it from the first function and system plans to the documentation of the complete cable sets for production at the supplier's." This includes, among other things, the derivation of the parts lists for purchasing or the circuit diagrams, which occur virtually incidentally in the development process and also make the after-sales area more efficient.
"The association of components and installation locations in EB is also a real help, it makes the interrelationships more transparent," explains the engineering expert and tells us how important it was for pepper to also have a seamless, bidirectional connection to the 3D CAD in order to best support the cable routing. "This has been a great success," he confirms.
Central data model gains time
The Electric/Electronic division for drive design and the Predevelopment division for systems and field engineering now work on the same data base and build on each other. "EB's central data model improves data quality while saving time on consultation, transmissions and the associated sources of error. This gives us more time for the essentials, namely more projects," sums up Zimmermann. For this reason – and because the company and its product portfolio are growing continuously – pepper will continue to expand its EB capacities. Sustainable retrofitting of trucks and buses is in demand, and this way the environment also benefits from EB.
