What Can Better PLM Do For You?

“I want it, and I want it now!”

You may have heard these words come out of your child’s mouth at one point or another, or perhaps your inner child has stamped its foot while snarling this phrase. Whatever the case may be, the fact remains that we live in a culture of now.

The ever increasing speed at which technology improves and changes has conditioned society to want new and improved products sooner. While we may not always express our wants in such a straightforward and demanding way, the expectation is there.

“The development lifecycle at Nissan is being shortened all the time,” Nissan senior engineer Ian Keen says. “Customer demands are ever increasing.”

This phenomenon is not unique to Nissan. Anyone familiar with the automotive industry should recognize it as a growing trend. But what can you do to ensure your company will rise to meet these challenges?

Nissan saw the answer was to improve their PLM solution, says vice president of Nissan vehicle design and development in Europe, David Moss.

“Through our collaboration with Siemens and NX and Teamcenter, we’ve been able to develop our vehicles to achieve our goals,” David adds.

In developing the new Qashqai, Nissan engineers were able to set a record for emissions by using NX CAE to eliminate unnecessary weight in the vehicle.

“We set a target of 99 grams of CO2, something that had never been achieved in a vehicle of this size before,” says David. “We were able to use the advanced simulation tools [in NX] to optimize our design.”

Of course, you must first have a design in order to be able to optimize it. That’s where NX CAD comes into play. Nissan designers were able to reduce data creation time by 20% because they were able to use existing designs from their studio in Padddington.

Nissan also used Teamcenter to work in real time with team members from around the globe. Another effect of increasing technology is the shrinking world phenomenon: People and corporations are becoming more and more global as ease of collaboration and communication increases.

“Many of our teams are geographically dispersed, be it in different locations across the U.K. or even globally in Japan,” says David. “Everybody could work on the same data, and we could really speed up our development and get the answers we needed much quicker.”

Watch the entire case study video here to learn more on the new Nissan Qashqai made possible with Siemens’ NX and Teamcenter.

Video Case Study: Nissan Qashqai and Siemens PLM