Lead Time Reduction using Automatic Reporting Director (ARD) for MAHLE

© MAHLE

Scott JanowiakNumerical Simulation EngineerENDES

Lead Time Reduction using Automatic Reporting Director (ARD) for MAHLE

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MAHLE Industries, Incorporated, ENDES, Scott Janowiak, 15-April-2015

Lead Time Reduction using ARD for MAHLE

© MAHLE

Agenda

Introduction of MAHLE

Background of FEA at MAHLE

Areas for Improvement

The Altair Connection

Challenges Faced

Special Developments

The Result

Video Demo

Questions

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Quick Introduction of MAHLE

MAHLE is a Tier 1 automotive systems supplier

Based in Stuttgart, Germany – Over 64,000 employees

– 10 R&D centers around the world

– Over $13 Billion in sales globally in 2014

North America – Over 10,000 employees in 29 locations

– Over $2.6 Billion in sales

– N.A. Headquarters located in Farmington Hills, MI

All light vehicle and truck OEM’s with production

operations in NA are supplied by MAHLE

Business Units include:

– Engine Systems and Components

– Aftermarket and Motorsports

– Filtration and Engine Peripherals

– Thermal Management (Previously Behr)

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FEA at MAHLE

Finite Element Analysis has become a major tool in the

development process

– Multiple design variants

– Several load and test cycles considered

– This leads to a lot of results to report!

Globally, MAHLE has a standard process for doing FEAs,

but no official reporting process

In FH, there are several engineers doing FEAs

– Pistons represent a bulk of the work

– Several engineers could work on the same engine

program

– Reports can take several hours to create

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Areas for Improvement

Standardized reports

– Each engineer has a slightly different

way of presenting the same results

Hard to compare variants if layout

is different

Speed / Cutting down wasted time

– A lot of the reporting time is spent doing

non-engineering work

Setting up the HyperView session

Cropping/aligning pictures

Picking nodes

Results Organization

– Summary tables require extra work

Picking nodes and changing

results

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The Altair Connection

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MAHLE has been using HyperWorks for over 6 years

– Good relationship with Altair team

Altair’s Product Development (PD) team approached MAHLE

with the concept of Automated Reporting

– MAHLE brought several reports for reference at the kick-

off meeting

– Also brought a wish-list of functions for an automated tool

Table generator

View Flexibility

MAHLE Master Template

– Altair PD quoted a 4-6 week lead time for customized

solution

Project started January 2014

http://group.intranet.mahle/en/home/home.jsp

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Challenges Faced

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Some of the challenges that we encountered:

– MAHLE has some unique files and results types

Internal Lifetime/Fatigue Calculation program

Needed special consideration for the table

maker

– The first program created skewed pictures

Image had white space all around

Aspect ratio not locked in PowerPoint

interface

– The hot spot finder was rounding the results

Found minimum, but not necessarily in

correct location

Working together with the Altair PD team, the issues

were able to be solved and great tool was created

Boundary Box in PPT Template

Correct Skewed

Correct

Min=4.71

Rounded

Min=4.74

Absolute

Min=4.71



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HyperView Automation

– Takes model and all result files

– Creates a 15 page HyperView

session

Special MAHLE page layout

– Custom legends applied

– Some pages left blank for text

– Session can be saved/reopened

later

– Director Window is easy to navigate



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Hotspot Finder

– Finds local hot spot of selected nodes

User selects Max or Min

Note created in HyperView

– Adds Lifetime/Fatigue result to summary

table

Also gathers stress and temperature

results for the node

– Also can be used for other results like

Pressure or Temperature

Results not added to summary table

– Exports results in a table in PowerPoint

Table can be edited

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Some of the other customized features are:

– A special high resolution image of our the

mesh

– A picture cropping tool that automatically

crops the white space

Separate Legend Picture

– Automatic Notes for Temperature

– A special interface with PowerPoint to

properly insert the pictures and ensure

the best quality image

– Ability to run in Batch-mode

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High Resolution Std. Resolution



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The Result

Working with Altair PD, the Automatic Reporting

Director was developed and customized to fit

MAHLE’s needs

– 5 weeks for delivery of final solution

The estimated reduction in lead time for a report

– From over 4 hours

– Down to less than 1 hour

Some of the other benefits are:

– Less wasted time of engineers

– Standardized layouts

– More details of the results with the

automatic table generator

The ARD tool was developed and is currently

being used in the US office, but is planned to be

deployed to the other MAHLE offices globally

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Video Demo

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Questions?

Documents

Lead Time Reduction using Automatic Reporting Director (ARD) for MAHLE