ProductsNX, Teamcenter

Business challengesNeed to shorten product development cycles and reduce design and engineer-ing costsGeographically dispersed design and engineering teamsShortage of engineering managersParallel development of multi-ple projectsDeveloping lightweight productsSynchronized development and visualization of global projects

Keys to successAdvanced automotive industry technology – TeamcenterYanfeng Adient EBP system jointly developed by Siemens PLM Software and Yanfeng Adient Mature PLM solutions from Siemens PLM SoftwareTop-down system develop-ment and implementation Optimization rather than reformulation of development processes

www.siemens.com/plm

China’s largest automotive seat supplier innovates with Siemens PLM Software solutions

Automotive seat industry leaderYanfeng Adient Seating Co., Ltd. (formerly Yanfeng Johnson Controls) was founded in 1997 as a joint venture of Yanfeng Visteon Automotive Trim Systems Company and Johnson Control Asia Holdings Company. The company provides automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) with complete seat solutions, from standard 4-direction seats to luxury 18-direction seats, from seat parts (covering metal frameworks, mechanisms, foam, trim cover and headrests) to complete seat systems, fulfilling customer requirements for brand image and design concept.

Automotive and transportation

Yanfeng AdientYanfeng Adient Seating Company fully deploys PLM to support synchronized global development

After 17 years of operation, Yanfeng Adient has gradually completed vertical integration of the entire industry value chain and is now China’s biggest automotive seat supplier. The company is also Johnson Controls Professional Automotive Trim Group’s larg-est automotive seat joint venture in the Asia-Pacific region, with the most advanced and complete managerial and technical tools.

Yanfeng Adient not only supplies almost all automakers in China, but also enjoys a considerable share in the global market, exporting products to 19 countries. Currently, the company has more than 35 production and research and development (R&D) facilities and 18,000 employees in China, with headquarters in the Shanghai

Kangqiao Industrial Zone and regional centers in Yantai, Nanjing, Chongqing and Guangzhou.

Yanfeng Adient owns the leading design verification and seat test capability in China. Through extensive exchange and cooperation with leading automakers, Yanfeng Adient has developed many seat products specifically for the China market with proprietary intellectual property rights, and has become a benchmark enterprise in the industry. The company provides seats and parts for about 30 percent of the vehicles in China. In addi-tion, Yanfeng Adient has been recognized for supplier excellence by many OEMs, including Shanghai General Motors, Shanghai Volkswagen, SGMW, Great Wall Motors, Changan Ford Mazda, Changan Suzuki, Dongfeng Motor, JAC and others.

Continuous road to digitalizationYanfeng Adient has customers all over the world, including well-known brands like GM, Benz, BMW, Ford, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Volvo, Land Rover and others. Automotive seats and parts must be devel-oped simultaneously with, or even prior to, the design of vehicles, so Yanfeng Adient must shorten product development cycles and reduce design and engineering costs. Challenges include the geographic distance between design teams and engi-neering teams, the re-use of parts, and managing the data needed by customers for concurrent development.

Between 2012 and 2014, the annual sales revenue of Yanfeng Adient increased from RMB 18 billion yuan to RMB 25 billion yuan. In the opinion of Ni Jiawen, deputy general manager and executive engineer-ing director of the technical center of Yanfeng Adient, the in-depth application of digital technologies has helped the company realize innovative results, contributed to the rapid growth of annual sales revenue and successfully trans-formed and upgraded the enterprise.

Yanfeng Adient began investing in digitali-zation in 1997, when the company began implementing the QAD enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for management of materials, finance and other functions. The following year, the company intro-duced NX™ software as its computer-aided design (CAD) tool. Five years later, Yanfeng Adient implemented Teamcenter® software for product data management (PDM), and established the Enterprise Program Information Collaboration (EPIC) environment for managing 2D data.

In 2004, Yanfeng Adient began expanding the application of Teamcenter and became the first user of Teamcenter among firms in China’s auto parts industry. Thanks to the successful implementation of Teamcenter, Yanfeng Adient won second place in the 2006 Asia-Pacific PLM Excellence Award.

Keys to success (continued)Clearly defined system goals and tightly controlled scopeEfficient implementation enabled by highly experienced Siemens PLM Software team

ResultsData retrieval and sharing time cut by 90 percentParts re-use increased from five percent to 25 percentBest-practice management of resources, engineering pro-cess flow and budgetsElimination of engineering prototypesDesign process utilizing auto-mated optimization to develop lightweight productsImproved support for quality- and manufacturing-oriented designReplacement of several differ-ent business systemsMore effective and accurate management of business pro-cesses and product dataSupport for cross-departmen-tal concurrent work activitiesSynchronization and sharing of data among all global sitesNot just innovation, but effi-cient innovation

In 2012, Yanfeng Adient further promoted Teamcenter to support its core businesses. “We chose Siemens PLM Software as our partner because they lead in 14 of the 17 categories of enterprise requirements,” says Ni. “Teamcenter supports us in main-taining our competitive edge, realizing our corporate strategies and improving our R&D capabilities.” Teamcenter is used in the research and development of dozens of seat systems, and on the average has cut data retrieval and sharing time by 90 percent, increased parts re-use from five percent to 25 percent, reduced manual file operations and improved data accuracy and security.

Business challenges lead to new engineering management solutionThe rapid growth of Yanfeng Adient presented new challenges. The number of new projects increased quickly while the human resource (HR) development was relatively slow, resulting in a serious short- age of engineering managers. Furthermore, as OEMs became more focused on passen-ger safety and comfort and attached more importance to the development of seats, they tightened requirements for time and

quality. Lastly, more than 100 seat devel-opment projects were conducted in parallel, with different customers, produc-tion times and product requirements.

All of the company’s projects needed to progress steadily in terms of technical feasibility, cost control and product quality control. According to Ni, Yanfeng Adient needed an engineering management system to enable business process trans-parency, and hoped that such a system

“ We chose Siemens PLM Software as our partner because they lead in 14 of the 17 categories of enterprise requirements. Teamcenter supports us in maintaining our competitive edge, realizing our corporate strategies and improving our R&D capabilities.”Ni Jiawen Deputy General Manager and Executive Engineering Director of Technical Center Yanfeng Adient Seating Company

would provide support for managing knowledge, deliverables, scheduling, project budgets and quality, while also satisfying the development needs of the core business.

In 2013, Yanfeng Adient teamed with Siemens PLM Software to develop and test a proprietary engineering management system, one of the first of its kind, to address engineering, business, budget, program, process and people. Using Teamcenter, this solution was designed to manage all the systems of a large technical center (except data), including budget, HR allocation, expense tracking, task allocation and others.

Yanfeng Adient arranged for the most experienced engineering supervisors and managers to participate in the entire

system development process. The company conducted the development and implementation activities in a top-down manner, and optimized rather than re-formulated existing processes. The system goals were definite, with strict control over the scope. In the course of development, refinements to the system were accommodated, provided that they did not change the initial goals.

Called EBP, the system has eliminated the use of engineering prototypes for produc-tion and supports a design methodology that uses automatic optimization to develop lightweight products. The EBP system embodies best practices for resource management and engineering process flows, including work tasks and deliverables. It also manages the prepara-tion, use and reporting of budgets.

“ The application of digital engineering makes Yanfeng Adient capable of efficient innovation.”

Ni Jiawen Deputy General Manager and Executive Engineering Director of Technical Center Yanfeng Adient Seating Company

“ PLM covers all the product data of Yanfeng Adient and enables the company to better support quality- and manufacture-oriented design. It has replaced several different business systems, enables more effective and more accurate management of business processes and product data, supports cross-department parallel work activities in the company, and realizes synchronization and sharing of data among all global sites.”Ni Jiawen Deputy General Manager and Executive Engineering Director of Technical Center Yanfeng Adient Seating Company

EPB has supported several business improvements since its implementation. Yanfeng Adient has enhanced the project scheduling and time control and increased project pass rates through implementation of best-practice product development processes. The engineering knowledge embedded in the system enables compo-nent designs to be based on optimized engineering practices from the earliest stages of design.

With the EPB system, each employee clearly understands each project and its work schedule, so that online and offline development work can be organically combined through weekly project-specific development team communications and exchanges. EBP is also linked to the purchase and finance systems of Yanfeng Adient, which enables more effective control of project costs. “Yanfeng Adient’s PLM system is a part of the EBP project, a global synchronized development project of Johnson Controls. After combining EBP with PLM, all of Yanfeng Adient’s day-to-day work is fully computerized,” says Ni.

Full implementation of the PLM systemIn 2014, PLM was fully deployed at Yanfeng Adient. At that time, supporting systems had been implemented incremen-tally. Part numbers, CAD files and documents were separately managed in different systems and not associated, resulting in managerial inefficiency. The information technology (IT) system of the engineering team wasn’t linked to the quality, production and process systems, and an effective visualization tool wasn’t yet available, thus making it difficult to improve work efficiency. There was no support for concurrent development or visualization of global projects.

With the implementation and application of the PLM system, Yanfeng Adient’s core businesses gained sufficient data support and process advantages. “PLM covers all the product data of Yanfeng Adient and enables the company to better support quality- and manufacture-oriented design,” Ni explains. “It has replaced several different business systems, enables more effective and more accurate

The digital model-based product development process enables accurate and efficient product design. Through seamless integration between product visualization and manufacturing simulation, digital engineering enables all participants to simultaneously access the latest engineering information.

Solutions/ServicesNX www.siemens.com/nxTeamcenter www.siemens.com/teamcenter

Customer’s primary businessYanfeng Adient Seating Co., Ltd. is the largest automotive seat supplier in China and pro-vides OEMs with complete seat solutions, seat parts (metal frameworks, mechanisms, foam, trim cover and head-rests) to complete seat systems that meet diverse customer requirements for brand images and design concepts. www.yfjci.com

Customer locationShanghai China

management of business processes and product data, supports cross-department parallel work activities in the company, and realizes synchronization and sharing of data among all global sites. The applica-tion of digital engineering makes Yanfeng Adient capable of efficient innovation.”

The digital model-based product develop-ment process enables accurate and efficient product design. Through seamless integration between product visualization and manufacturing simulation, digital engineering enables all participants to simultaneously access the latest engineer-ing information.

Manpower savings illustrate the advan-tages. “In 2004, with annual sales of several billion yuan, Yanfeng Adient employed seven data administrators,” says Ni, “while in 2014, with annual sales of 25 billion yuan, Yanfeng Adient still employed only seven data administrators, despite the significantly expanded business and capac-ity. Without the help and support of Siemens PLM Software, this would not be possible.”

Siemens PLM Software

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