Autodesk Customer Success Story The Escorts Group

COMPANY

The Escorts GroupLOCATIONHaryana, India

SOFTWAREAutodesk® Alias™

Autodesk Alias is a special-ized design tool that would not only perform the nec-essary tasks of sketching, modeling, surfacing quickly and efficiently, but also facil-itates innovations.

— Arun Muthumani Senior Manager- Vehicle Styling Escorts Agri Machinery Group

Autodesk Alias used to develop efficient and powerful tractor “Farmtrac”

After implementing Autodesk Alias, Escorts modifies main approach to conceptualizing and developing

Image courtesy of The Escorts Group

ProfileAs a pioneer for more than 56 years, The Es-corts Group, is among India’s leading en-gineering conglomerates operating in the high growth sectors of agri-machinery, con-struction & material handling equipment, railway equipment and auto components.

Founded in 1948, the company is headquartered in Faridabad, Haryana. Escorts had the technolo-gy and business collaboration with world leaders over the years, Today, Escorts offers a compre-hensive range of tractors, more than 45 variants starting from 25 to 80 HP. Escorts, Farmtrac and Powertrac are the widely accepted and preferred brands of tractors.

Escorts has been one of the greatest ally in the country’s growth. With its globally competitive indigenous engineering capabilities, over 1600 sales and service outlets and footprints in over 40 countries have been instrumental in making Escorts the Indian multinational. The compa-ny has its own product development depart-ment and state of the art manufacturing plants.

Escorts endeavors to transform lives in rural and urban India by leading the revolution in agricul-ture mechanization and modernization by offer-ing wide range, high-performance equipment to load with numerous features to help farmers get the tough field work done as quickly and effi-ciently as possible.

Image courtesy of The Escorts Group

Autodesk Customer Success Story The Escorts Group

To further improve its technological edge and product develop-ment efficiency, Escorts introduced Autodesk Alias to streamline its design process

ChallengesNo modern farm is complete without an array of advanced machines to help with the workload. Farm tractors are an universal machine that com-plete many varied jobs. With all the advanced ma-chines available, farm tractors are still a farmer’s preferred machine of choice. With the ability to complete many different tasks, the humble tractor has never gone out of favour with the farmer.

Over the last decade, the Indian agriculturist has evolved from just being a subsistent farmer to the one with an entrepreneurial mind. Along with the farm equipments, most of them also have luxury cars. They are now looking for the high precision equipments with international technology and de-sign standards in tractors that match the luxury vehicle features.

Over the last seventeen years, Escorts has im-plemented a number of changes in the Farmtrac series resulting in a radical improvement in fuel economy and reliability. But, there were not many changes done to its aesthetics and comfort.

Designing a modern age tractor is challenging, especially true in the world of agriculture. One cannot offer product armed with computer sys-tems, keeping the cost and hassle of repairing and maintaining has to be kept low as possible.

“The customer expectation has skyrocketed in the last decade, apart from better fuel economy and power they expect to have a better driving ex-perience, advanced functionalities, convenience features, dynamic display panel, sophisticated lighting system, aesthetically appealing looks. So, it is the biggest challenge to do all this magic on restrictive aspects of vehicle packaging and an un-yielding schedule.” Said Arun Muthumani, Senior Manager- Vehicle Styling, Styling Studio, Escorts Agri machinery Group

Key BenefitsWith styling studio in place since 2009, Escorts product development environment is well honed. To further improve its technological edge and product development efficiency, Escorts introduc-es Autodesk Alias to streamline its design process.

“Autodesk Alias is a specialized design tool that would not only perform the necessary tasks of sketching, modeling, surfacing quickly and effi-ciently, but also facilitates innovations.” Said Arun Muthumani

Image courtesy of The Escorts Group

Image courtesy of The Escorts Group

SolutionAfter implementing Autodesk Alias, Escorts has notably modified its main approach to conceptualizing and developing products. As geographical markets also vary in their product requirements, engineers and marketing team worked together to perform customer surveys in different parts of the country to understand customer requirements, contexts of use, fea-tures, technical solutions and aesthetic aspects.

Arun Muthumani explains “Autodesk Alias al-lows us to make a new design that is radically different, generating lots of ideas, contexts of use, functionalities and techniques that can be quickly and easily shaped on prototypes before the application of the best ideas concerning the technical and aesthetic design. It allows us to evaluate all the concepts from the points of view of both marketing and engineering, step-by-step, ensuring that the end-product will meet all expectations.”

The result of this new design was “Farmtrac” a new Escorts tractor that combines innovative techniques. Autodesk Alias software played a key role in helping the Escorts to meet design and development criteria, mostly components visible to customers, starting with the stylish LED head lamps, converting three piece bonnet to single piece similar to hood of a car, digital speedometer and instrument cluster with back-light, new light weight fender rails, stylish side guards for radiator sealing, more leg space for driver, heat guards, better clutch and brake pedals, side shift gear for easy gear changing, adjustable bucket seat with durable material in order to withstand prolonged use and im-pressive steering wheel with enhance grip and comfort are the major features on the executive Farmtrac tractor series.

Image courtesy of The Escorts Group

Image courtesy of The Escorts Group

Image courtesy of The Escorts Group

Autodesk Customer Success Story The Escorts Group

The ResultThe Farmtrac tractors are the reflection of how Escorts would continue to bring in international technology and design standards to the Indian tractor market. The Escorts Styling studio used Au-todesk Alias from concept stage for development of production-ready Class-A surfaces to develop efficient and powerful tractor with the elegance of a perfect shape and features like a luxury car. “Escorts believes that Indian farmers deserve the world’s best farm mechanization solution, with Autodesk Alias, the company continues to demon-strate its commitment to quality, innovation and the pursuit of excellence in the highly competi-tive recreational tractor market” concludes Arun Muthumani

www.autodeskindia.com/customerstories.

Escorts believes that Indian farmers deserve the world’s best farm mechanization solution, With Autodesk Alias, the company continues to demonstrate its commit-ment to quality, innovation and the pursuit of excellence in the highly competitive rec-reational tractor market

— Arun Muthumani Senior Manager- Vehicle Styling Escorts Agri Machinery Group

Image courtesy of The Escorts Group

Autodesk [and other products] are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product and services offerings, and specifications and pricing at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. © 2015 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.