Beijing Foton Daimler Automotive Co., Ltd. (BFDA) is a joint venture between Daimler AG and the Chinese truck manufacturer Foton Motor. The company has been developing, producing and selling Auman brand trucks since 2012. It has successfully introduced European manufacturing standards in China and adopted Daimler's research and development concept and production technology. The aim is to develop a new generation of heavy-duty trucks. In the course of this, in 2014 Foton Daimler opted for AUCOTEC's wiring harness planning platform Engineering Base (EB) Cable.
Single Source of Truth saves time
Fast changes and quick response to customer requests are in high demand in the Chinese truck market. Therefore, EB's data-centric principle of each object in the model existing only once was compelling. In this way, changes – whether made in the graphic, a list or the Explorer – appear in real time in every other representation of the changed object. The traditional design tools previously used at BFDA were more graphical and document-oriented, drawings had to be changed manually, and the transmission of changes took time and was error-prone. It was not possible to map a complete digital twin of the wiring harness. Different editors had stored their own data locally, circuit diagram and wiring harness drawings were in separate tools, synchronizations were very time-consuming. The Single Source of Truth in EB Cable enables a common data model from the basic concept to the wiring harness. All design objects are always clearly recognizable at all the different stages.
Fast changes and central data availability for all parties involved now significantly shorten project cycles, improve the quality of the design and save developers time for manual transmissions and checks.
Synchronization between 3D and 2D
3D is an important factor in wiring harness development. EB's HIM Pro (Harness Integration Manager) module bridges the gap between 2D design and mechanical design data. It enables BFDA to have a digital data interaction between EB Cable and the 3D system CATIA. EB imports the topology and thus has the option of creating a 2D representation of the wiring harness. Thanks to the information from the data model, the line lengths can also be calculated accurately. The integration documents all changes. EB Cable is thus not only the basis for optimum cost control of wiring harness development and production, but at the same time supports BFDA in setting up a digital supertruck factory.
