Mentor Graphics Corp. announced that LEONI is expanding its use of Capital® software throughout the world. LEONI now has significant Capital software deployments in Europe, America and Pacific Rim. This growth is driven in part by increasing adoption of the modular approach to wire harness configuration management, also known as customer-specific or zero give-away harnessing. This approach is strongly supported by the Mentor® Capital ModularXC™ tool, which in turn is tightly linked with other products in the Capital suite and with adjacent applications such as mechanical CAD applications.
“Capital is by far the most capable commercial off-the-shelf software addressing wire harness design, engineering and manufacturing. So it is the natural choice as LEONI’s standard environment” said Carsten Wilhelm, Director of Engineering Systems for Manufacturing. “Mentor also has technical depth across multiple relevant domains, excellent geographic coverage, and strong presence at the world’s leading automotive and off-road vehicle OEMs. In addition, Capital ModularXC is a really key tool. We are now seeing the modular approach being taken up in America and Pacific Rim, whereas previously this method was more common in in Europe. Capital ModularXC helps position LEONI as a world-leading supplier of modular harnesses.”
The modular approach addresses challenges caused by extreme configuration complexity within vehicle electrical systems, which in turn is caused by the rapid growth of electrical/electronic options and mechanical variants offered to vehicle buyers. Involving the management of harness “fragments” that correspond to vehicle functions, the modular approach can deliver substantial cost savings over the more traditional part number -oriented approach to harness configuration management. The Capital ModularXC tool fully supports both approaches, and also allows harness designs to be re-analyzed in terms of sub-assemblies selected for optimized manufacturing. Coupled with advanced functionality such as configurable diagram styling, the Capital ModularXC tool is therefore very versatile and hence is well suited to harness suppliers adopting common tools across their multiple OEM-facing business units.
Nick Smith, product marketing director of the Integrated Electrical Systems Division at Mentor Graphics, noted “Modular harnessing is not the only dynamic driving LEONI’s expanded use of Capital. LEONI also makes good use of other tools within the suite, for example to design formboards and perform detailed manufacturing cost analyses. Some of these processes are particularly sophisticated, so the value LEONI derives from the software is very strong.”
The Capital suite spans an extended electrical systems “Define – Design – Build – Service” flow and is particularly targeted at transportation applications. The Capital tools are used by many of the world’s leading wire harness suppliers, many of whom undertake design work for their OEM customers using the Capital suite in addition to engineering and manufacturing the harnesses themselves.
