Even more power for rail vehicle technology

PowerTech Converter (PTC) has been offering innovative electrical supply systems for rail traffic, industry and research for years. They set standards that also take climate and environmental protection into account. One area also ensures sustainable repairs and modernization of rail vehicles. Nearly 70 engineers from the Rail Engineering team support customers from all over the world throughout the wire harness design process.

From 3 to 1

For this purpose, the engineers were not only looking for an engineering system that could display wires and associated details, but which would also allow a bidirectional exchange with the 3-D tool to automatically and consistently integrate routing and wire length calculation. This is not the only reason why the Mobility division chose AUCOTEC's cooperation platform Engineering Base (EB). "EB has standardized our tool environment; we used to have to handle three systems and manually compare them," reported Robert Rehberg, Head of Design at PTC Rail OEM GmbH.

Saving time with quality and transparency

EB now saves a lot of time there during the wire list creation, which also takes the fastening materials into account. "The data quality is significantly improved, and BOMs and circuit diagrams are also easier to trace," said the Head of Design. He also praised the transparency in the change process as well as EB's Workflow Assistant, which ensures completeness. The standardized entire design template projects ("150%") in EB also save time and have only to be pared down to customer-specific requirements.

The two understand each other: SAP and EB

EB meets yet another crucial PowerTech requirement: items such as BOMs are automatically provided for SAP and continuously updated via a highly efficient SAP connection. It also includes Inventor's 3-D information, which can be found as mechatronics positions throughout the entire project. All objects have the same unique ID in SAP, EB and 3-D.

For this standard interface, AUCOTEC cooperates with the ERP experts from it-motive, whose data hub IMAP always ensures seamless communication of the systems without any update effort. On the EB side, the "ERP/PLM Integration Platform" can be easily implemented. The completely web-service-oriented solution works in a client-independent and automated manner. No one needs expert knowledge of the respective third-party system in order to obtain information.

Convincingly flexible

"Thanks to AUCOTEC's targeted project management, the ERP and 3-D connections have been successful. The handling of the various players was convincing," said Rehberg. PowerTech Converter has been realigned since June 2020. "EB was a stabilizing factor during the restructuring, also due to AUCOTEC's flexible license handling," he added.