CIMdata Press Releases
CIMdata Publishes a New Report: “Electro-Mechanical Product Development: The Mechatronics Requirement for Automotive Competitiveness”
ANN ARBOR, Michigan, July 12, 2006—In a newly published report entitled “Electro-Mechanical Product Development: The Mechatronics Requirement for Automotive Competitiveness”, CIMdata, Inc. explores new advances in product development in the Automotive industry using mechatronics. Mechatronics, rapidly becoming critical to this industry, is the blending of designs using a combination of mechanical components along with new software-driven.
The report presents the business reasons for implementing mechatronics and provides examples to illustrate the impact of mechatronics solutions today and what should be expected in the near future. It also highlights the unique problems with mechatronics and the risks associated with its implementation in a company’s product design process. These include the lack of standards across the mechatronic design and deployment processes, increased complexity in automobile support and maintenance, and challenges to the overall organizational structures used to mange product design in automotive companies.
The report suggests that Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) can help mitigate these risks and improve the mechatronic design process. According to Tom Boyer, CIMdata Senior Consultant, “PLM applications should be implemented to enable mechatronics. PLM provides design system integration, collaboration tools, workflow processes, revision control, and data repositories required by the design engineer.” Mr. Boyer added, “PLM also provides requirements management, portfolio management, and project management tools which are required by the mechatronics development manager.” PLM provides the infrastructure to integrate the design team and becomes “one-source-of-truth” for everyone, whether they are local or worldwide; focused on R&D, supply chain, or support.
Copies of the “Electro-Mechanical Product Development: The Mechatronics Requirement for Automotive Competitiveness” report are available at no cost through the CIMdata website.