reducing repetitive tasks & accelerating the reporting...
TRANSCRIPT
Reducing Repetitive Tasks & Accelerating the Reporting Process
Success Story
Keywords: Automated Reporting Director
The automotive industry is forever
modifying itself, incorporating innovative
new processes to help keep pace with
a rapidly expanding and ever changing
market. This practice does not escape
the tier-1 automotive suppliers, who must
keep pace with OEMs. Shaving minutes
off the menial engineering processes
means additional time can be allocated to
productive tasks, which in the end means
more innovative products.
Founded in 1947, F.tech is a world class
certified Tier-1 international automotive
systems supplier, headquartered in Japan,
with a research and development office
located in Troy, OH.The company provides a
range of automotive components to its OEM
partners including subframes, trailing arms,
lower control arms and pedals.
F.tech R&D North America has full in-house
R&D capabilities including design, CAE,
prototyping, and testing. Having its own
research and development groups along
with design and engineering service teams
that work on CAE and testing lab validation.
F.tech R&D North America’s CAE team focus
on virtual design validation and makes
extensive use of simulation tools, including
Altair’s own HyperWorks suite. One of
the key tools used by F.tech from Altair is
HyperView, HyperWorks post-processing and
results visualization solution.
The ChallengeF.tech R&D North America utilizes HyperView
to investigate test results, using the
data to inform decisions on methods to
improve designs. This data will often be
used to create reports and presentations
IndustryAutomotive
ChallengeReduce the time taken to produce project reports
Altair SolutionImplemented the Automated Reporting Director to automatically extract results and export to PowerPoint
Benefits
• Standardized report generation
• Time saving of 80%
Key Highlights
R&D N.A.
"Altair ProductDesign was able to provide us with a customized program that precisely catered to our reporting needs, allowing more time to focus on the project."
during the development process, using
images and animations generated by
HyperView to illustrate particular areas of a
component where additional work may be
required. However, exporting these assets
is a highly manual process of loading in
results, positioning the model and taking
screenshots. To allow its engineers to
concentrate efforts on exploring and
interpreting the results, F.tech R&D North
America wanted a way of automating this
process.
Already having experience with HyperWorks
and knowledge of Altair’s reputation
within the engineering industry, F.tech
R&D North America reached out to the
company for a better process that could
help cut down on processing time, after
attending an Altair webinar in late 2013. The
consulting project was delegated to Altair
ProductDesign’s Enterprise Solutions Group
(ESG), a team which specializes in increasing
organizational efficiency by combining
tailored software solutions with customized
services.
Using the Automated Reporting Director inside of Hyperview, users have a table to enter data for checking several different types of analysis
James Smith Senior Design TechnicianF.tech R&D North America
F.tech R&D North America Success Story
Automating The Reporting ProcessAltair ProductDesign tackled the reporting
issues in two parts. First they evaluated
the 50 different testing metrics F.tech R&D
North America generally uses to generate a
report and made the recommendation that
Altair’s Automated Reporting Director (ARD)
could be implemented to help streamline
reporting activities.
Altair’s ARD is integrated directly into the
HyperView environment and is designed
to eliminate the tedious and repetitive
tasks associated with the mechanics of
generating reports. The solution automates
the detection of result maxima or hot spots,
best view selection, creation of notes and
legends, and highlights the most interesting
results in an interactive tab.
With an understanding of the current
process, Altair ProductDesign was able to
customize the ARD to meet company-wide
best practices and ensure it would work
seamlessly within the existing workflow.
Altair ProductDesign then trained key
members of F.tech R&D North America’s
engineering team on how to use the new
panels in HyperView effectively.
The customized ARD was set to record
results for static stiffness, static durability
with stress output, non-linear durability
permanent set displacement, and NVH
analysis, capturing the images, data tables
as well as gif animations required to create a
suitable report. Any future project with these
requirements will benefit from time savings
by using this program.
The ARD was implemented to run a report
for a project that had more than 20 static
durability load cases and more than 50
design iterations, which typically would take
an average of 4 hours for the F.tech R&D
North America team to create while manually
recording results. The ARD was able to
generate a report in just moments, and only
required a few minutes of customized data
entry before the program was run.
Reducing Reporting Time By 80%The ARD has become an invaluable asset for
F.tech R&D North Americato use whenever
an engineer has a need to create, exchange,
or present simulation result reports
internally and externally. The engineering
team is now able to better estimate the
length of time needed for report generation,
no matter if it’s a 10 page or 50 page report
or the variable being tested, with the team
reporting time savings of as much as 80%
in their report generation process compared
to its previous manual routine. This has
allowed the F.tech engineers to focus entirely
on interpreting and understanding the
results as opposed to manually creating the
required reports.
Find out more at:
www.altairproductdesign.com
Targets along with naming information are added into tables which automatically populates PowerPoint with results
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Altair Engineering, Inc., World Headquarters: 1820 E. Big Beaver Rd., Troy, MI 48083-2031 USAPhone: +1.248.614.2400 • Fax: +1.248.614.2411 • www.altair.com • [email protected]
Visit the Altair ProductDesign library of
at www.altairproductdesign.com
Success Stories
Altair empowers client innovation and decision-making through technology that optimizes the analysis, management and visualization of business and engineering information. Privately held with more than 2,200 employees, Altair has offices throughout North America, South America, Europe and Asia/Pacific. With a 30-year-plus track record for high-end software and consulting services for engineering, computing and enterprise analytics, Altair consistently delivers a competitive advantage to customers in a broad range of industries. Altair has more than 5,000 corporate clients representing the automotive, aerospace, government and defense, and consumer products verticals. Altair also has a growing client presence in the electronics, architecture engineering and construction, and energy markets.
Altair ProductDesign is a global, multi-disciplinary product development consultancy of more than 800 designers, engineers, scientists, and creative thinkers. As a wholly owned subsidiary of Altair Engineering Inc., this organization is best known for its market leadership in combining its engineering expertise with computer aided engineering (CAE) technology to deliver innovation and automate processes. Altair ProductDesign utilizes proprietary simulation and optimization technologies (such as Altair HyperWorks) to help clients bring innovative, profitable products to market on a tighter, more efficient time-scale.
About Altair
About Altair ProductDesign
www.altairproductdesign.com
HyperWorks is an enterprise simulation solution for rapid design exploration and decision-making. As one of the most comprehensive, open-architecture CAE solutions in the industry, HyperWorks includes best-in-class modeling, analysis, visualization and data management solutions for linear, nonlinear, structural optimization, fluid-structure interaction, and multi-body dynamics applications.
About HyperWorks
www.altairhyperworks.com