XVL Customer Story: Toyoda Iron Works
Evolution of 3D Data Utilization at Toyoda Iron Works
Toyoda Iron Works (TIW) started the transition from 2D to 3D (CATIA) in the 2000s. The transition was not easy. Several years later, 3D CAD and CAE had been rolled out to limited departments. During that time, there were no company-wide standards for CAD/CAE usage. Even though some departments were using 3D, lack of company-wide standards resulted in a lot of unnecessary rework in the late stages of design and production planning.
At the same time, Toyota Motor Corporation launched a "3D as the Master" initiative which included providing 3D data to suppliers like TIW. This triggered TIW to launch the Digital and Simultaneous Engineering Initiative.
The overall objective of the “D-SE Initiative” was to create a complete work environment centered on the 3D model and related data that enabled the Digital Engineering (DE) environment and to promote utilization of DE processes for design, Simultaneous Engineering (SE) and production planning. The initial goals were to:
- Eliminate design rework
- Reduce costs due to rework by 80%
- Reduce the overall lead time from development to production readiness.
The D-SE Initiative resulted in several projects. For example, the production management division used XVL to improve the efficiency of product packaging.
Using XVL for leveraging 3D data is much easier than using 3D CAD. The main reasons are XVL’s ultralight format that retains CAD-level accuracy and being CAD-agnostic. Most often complete products are segmented into many CAD models for size or working convenience. With XVL, all of the CAD models can be brought together. Even different CAD formats that might have been gigabyte-sized files can be brought together into a single XVL file. These consolidated XVL files can then be managed by XVL Contents Manager for version control to downstream functions.
