Find new potentials based on the Digital Twin of the Electrical Distribution System

Hardly any other industry has to face such conflicting demands at the same time as the truck and bus manufacturers: on the one hand, optimizing through standardized series development, on the other, meeting special customer requests. Whether series or special vehicle, truck or city bus, the variant handling of the on-board power supply is always highly demanding. Variants and their dependencies must be managed for each electric vehicle system and linked to all planning details. This task cannot be managed efficiently with the usual document-oriented tools.

With Engineering Base (EB), AUCOTEC has created a platform that not only solves this dilemma. This allows the digital twin of each on-board power supply to be created down to the last detail and represented in different views. On the one hand, this significantly simplifies the variant handling. On the other, the departments save waiting times and avoid transmission errors, as this twin serves as a single source of truth for all parties involved. There, all logics and associations are always complete and consistently traceable. This also allows analyses and calculations to be made on all the data compiled.

A particular challenge for truck & bus manufacturers is the trend towards autonomous driving. Here, the issues of traceability and automation are even more important than ever. New standards such as ISO 26262 must be complied with to ensure functional safety. Both traceability in the development process of the on-board power supplies and the avoidance of systemic errors play a decisive role. EB's central data model makes transparent and analysable data, on which algorithms for automated process steps can be executed, available to all those involved at any time in the development process.

This would be impossible with conventional planning tools. There, for example, nowhere near all the data necessary for automated evaluations can be placed on circuit diagrams.

In contrast to these highly graphically oriented planning tools, on-board power supply professionals can also work purely alphanumerically with EB. The matching plan is just another representation of the created data, so it often appears automatically. Changes only have to be made once, no matter in which view, and are automatically saved in the single source of truth. In addition, templates of all kinds can be stored in EB's library, from simple to highly complex, always reusable and easily customizable. For example, a control unit already "knows" which connectors are needed for its pin and a system knows the signal connections to be implemented. Each item of equipment can be extended with any number of attributes, all of which can of course be evaluated.

In addition to electrical components and the cable sets including all components, the digital on-board power supply twin also contains logical objects such as signals, segments, functions or variants. A prerequisite for complex analyses on these objects is to also know the relationships between the defined properties. Since EB has this knowledge, rule-based checks or automatic planning steps can be implemented in addition to a wide variety of reports. For example, the automatic selection of connector contacts based on defined properties.

Planners can easily define their checks in an instant, often with just a few mouse clicks. They determine more complex checks and process automation via EB's easy-to-understand API. The design professionals are thus spared the tedious search through many drawings for the aspects to be checked, as well as the errors that are unavoidable with manual working.

EB can be easily integrated into any IT infrastructure thanks to its special system openness. Thanks to standard interfaces, the platform can exchange information with the system worlds of PLM, ERP or mechanical CAD and thus integrates perfectly into any company process. There are connections to SAP, Teamcenter, NX or 3DExperience, to name but a few. This synchronization ensures unprecedented end-to-end data consistency.

Another advantage that many international customers particularly appreciate is EB's language diversity. Availability in virtually every national language also facilitates international cooperation. And the fact that EB's Microsoft-style look and feel makes operation simple and intuitive despite its ability to map even the highest levels of complexity is an advantage in many vehicle projects that should not be underestimated.

Today's vehicle manufacturers could already offer holistic mobility concepts tomorrow, combining diverse means of transport, drive technologies, new technologies and services. This would not be conceivable without a digital twin that provides the data required for new processes not only in vehicle development but also for their operation and can present them in an integrated IT environment.

EB offers you plenty of potential for all of this - so don't hesitate, create!