26 June 2007

Fueltech became the first company in Sweden to choose Catia PLM Express and become part of the common Catia V5 working platform in the automotive industry.

Fueltech Sweden, a member of Sag Group, is a high-end player in its niche market as a fuel, oil and urea tank supplier to the automotive industry. With a desire to reinforce its already strong position in this market it turned to Semcon, well known for its expertise in this sector, to improve its product development processes.

Fueltech chose Dassault Systèmes’ Catia product lifecycle management (PLM) Express in order to become part of the common working platform in the automotive industry. Catia PLM Express is a scalable solution that delivers core collaborative PDM functionality via Enovia SmarTeam, for optimised Catia design management and collaboration.

Fueltech is active in two areas. The first is as a tank specialist in customer aftermarket sales (CAS) for special vehicles and other smaller customers with specific design demands. The second concerns tanks for original equipment manufacture (OEM) companies such as Volvo and Scania. Given the very different dynamics of these two segments, each imposes different supplier requirements.

Matthias Nedfors, product manager of Fueltech Sweden R&D department says of the CAS market: “There are often several rounds of discussions with customers with respect to a design before reaching an agreement. This is why shortening the product design preparation time becomes crucial”. That is exactly where Catia PLM Express comes into play.

During the design stage, a fuel and hydraulic oil tank have the same section cut, whereas the end product varies in length, size or positions of holes. “This is an ideal situation for using the parametric model,” states Nedfors. Now with the simple click of a button, or by dragging a diagram arrow, the process is reduced from several days to a few hours. This dramatically shortens construction lead time with not only a more effective product design process, but also a much higher level of customer satisfaction.

With the OEM market the concerns are slightly different. “Many projects from our big OEM customers are quite large in terms of breadth and depth, which means that communication can be time consuming. This is why it is crucial to match the customers’ PLM working environment,” comments Nedfors.

Volvo and Scania adopting Catia V5 was a major initial catalyst for Fueltech to do the same. With the same working environment as its strategic customers as well as with Sag’s R&D headquarters in Austria, all the product development verifications are under the same design program. This shortens the total product development lifecycle from 12-16 weeks, to four-six weeks.

Fueltech’s vision is to increase production volume by over 30 per cent and hire another engineer by the end of 2007. With the benefit of Catia V5, Nedfors is convinced that his department is well prepared to grow and to meet the challenges of the future. “Maybe one year from now we will be able to show you more of the impact Catia PLM Express has had not only on the product development process, but also on the entire production chain,” he says.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2007 issue of Prime magazine.