{"id":24,"date":"2020-02-07T16:08:20","date_gmt":"2020-02-07T21:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/?p=24"},"modified":"2026-03-26T13:41:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T17:41:20","slug":"modernizing-wire-harness-manufacturing-with-a-model-based-approach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/2020\/02\/07\/modernizing-wire-harness-manufacturing-with-a-model-based-approach\/","title":{"rendered":"Modernizing Wire Harness Manufacturing with a Model-Based Approach"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The increase in electrical and electronic features in modern vehicles is placing more emphasis on the wiring harness that transmits power and signals between actuators, sensors and ECUs (figure 1). ADAS and automated driving systems are particularly demanding due to the external sensors that the systems need to perceive the vehicle\u2019s environment, such as approaching objects or speed limit signs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Figure 1: Modern cars feature a range of sophisticated electrical and electronic features. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, increasing demand for highly automated and\nelectrically propelled cars directly translates to a growing wire harness\nmanufacturing industry. Analysts predict that by 2023 the automotive wiring\nharness industry will grow to over 70 billion dollars in yearly revenue and\nmore than 91 billion dollars by 2025 (Future Market Insights, 2016).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With growth comes fresh challenges and new pressures on\nthe industry. To support the greater number of electrical and electronic\nsystems, some of which are very sophisticated, wiring harnesses are becoming\nintensely complex. Manufacturers must also accommodate all of the possible\nconfigurations of a vehicle, a number that frequently rockets into the tens of\nmillions. While manufacturing these complex systems, companies have to meet\nvery tight timelines, exacting quality requirements, and minimize the cost and\nweight of the harness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Current\nChallenges<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Engineering and manufacturing methods common across the\nindustry have been in use for decades, and are showing their limitations in a\nnew era. Wire harness manufacturing continues to be an extremely labor-intensive\nprocess. Today, approximately 85% of all wire harness manufacturing operations\nare carried out manually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even more troublesome is the fragmentation between the\nharness design and manufacturing departments and systems. Design and\nmanufacturing engineers often transfer data manually between their respective\ndomains, recreating and reentering the transferred design data into each of\ntheir systems, such as CAD, production, assembly board design, or costing\nsystems, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conventional wire harness manufacturing methods are\nstarting to creak under the weight of these new challenges. First, fragmented\ndesign and manufacturing processes lead to manual data transfer and reentry\nbetween domains. This is slow, error-prone, and an inefficient use of\nengineers\u2019 time and attention. As manufacturing engineers make changes to\nimprove the manufacturability of the harness, these changes often are lost in\nthe transition of data between teams. Even in state-of-the-art facilities, the\nhigh-level process from design engineering through product engineering,\nmanufacturing engineering and generation of the manufacturing documentation is\ncompleted with basic office applications and AutoCAD drawings. The information\nis passed along to the next person in the chain, who manually recreates the\nnon-digital information in another format or style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is no longer contemporary nor acceptable. New product\nintroduction cycles can take months, and design changes up to a few weeks to be\nfully implemented. Manual data sharing and reentry causes mistakes that cost\nmoney, time, and, even worse, can jeopardize a good relationship with the\ncustomer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The accelerating pace of program milestones also means\nthat manufacturing engineers have little time to optimize the manufacturing\nprocess, leading to a sub-optimal process from the beginning. One task that can\nbe particularly challenging is the creation of work instructions. With current\nmethods, creating work instructions is a difficult, time-consuming, and\nchallenging job that requires skill and expertise to complete accurately, and\non time. Work instructions that are late or low-quality can lead to inadequate\nand unsatisfactory workstations, further leading to assembler errors. Errors\nthat are found during testing cause engineers to perform lengthy reworks, or\neven scrap the faulty harness entirely, producing unexpected costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Figure 2 shows a typical, high-level manufacturing engineering flow in the wire harness industry. Today, errors from manual data reentry can occur at any of these stages, each of which requires great skill and experience to complete accurately. Adjustments and corrections made downstream in the flow must be fed upstream manually in order to achieve data coherency. The conventional wire harness manufacturing methodology is vulnerable to errors from fragmented processes, and the loss of tribal knowledge as engineers retire or leave their jobs. Other key issues include inconsistent or inaccurate costings, sub-optimal formboard design or manufacturing process design, and misplacing key information on the shop floor. These can lead directly to inefficiency during production. As a result, manufacturing and overall costs can overshoot the quotation made to the customer, and production quality can suffer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Figure 2: The high level manufacturing engineering flow in the wiring harness industry. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Model-Based Harness Manufacturing<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

A model-based flow unifies the previously fragmented\ndomains of design and manufacturing by automating data exchange and providing\nengineers with access to cross-domain decisions. Tribal knowledge, previously\nheld by experienced engineers, is captured through integrated design rules that\nsupport automation, guide all engineers consistently and check designs for\nissues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are three key aspects to digitalization and the model-based enterprise in the wire harness industry (figure 3). First are digital models of the wire harness product and the manufacturing process. The digital models of the harness and production process together constitute the digital twin. Automation is the second pillar. Modern harness design and manufacturing solutions can consume design rules created by veteran engineers and use them to automate the transformation of the digital harness and process models into bills-of-process, work instructions, and other output formats. The third pillar is data reuse. Instead of recreating or reentering data, in a model-based engineering flow, data is created once and reused to the greatest extent possible by all upstream and downstream consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Figure 3: The three key tenets of a model-based enterprise: digitalization, automation, and data reuse. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Companies create a digital thread in which all of the\nfunctions, from architectural and functional design through to physical design,\nmanufacturing engineering and after-sales service, can all use the same data.\nAt each stage of the harness lifecycle, each stakeholder can use the same data\nmodels and have access to decisions that are made in other domains. Using a\ndigital thread, design cycles are faster and issues can be caught and resolved\nearlier in the process when they are much less expensive. By also reducing\ndesign rework, data reuse minimizes costs and enables superior manufacturing\nefficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, solution partners offer integrated software portfolios to help wiring harness manufacturers prepare for the challenges of tomorrow. Capital, part of the Xcelerator portfolio<\/a>, supports the full wiring harness engineering and manufacturing flow, from definition through production. In part 2, we will examine how such solutions can help wiring harness manufacturers implement a model-based engineering flow to improve their quality, efficiency, and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can also read our whitepaper on model-based systems engineering for wiring harness manufacturing by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The increase in electrical and electronic features in modern vehicles is placing more emphasis on the wiring harness that transmits…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69444,"featured_media":26,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[106,117,113,116],"industry":[42,43,44,45],"product":[],"coauthors":[512],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-manufacturing","tag-model-based-systems-engineering","tag-today-meets-tomorrow","tag-wiring-harness","industry-automotive-transportation","industry-automotive-oems","industry-automotive-suppliers","industry-trucks-buses-specialty-vehicles"],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/24\/2020\/02\/Fig-2-Harness-mfg-digital-flow-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69444"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":731,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/ee-systems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}