Reducing Repetitive Tasks & Accelerating the Reporting Process

Success Story

Keywords: Automated Reporting Director

The automotive industry is forever

modifying itself, incorporating innovative

new processes to help keep pace with

a rapidly expanding and ever changing

market. This practice does not escape

the tier-1 automotive suppliers, who must

keep pace with OEMs. Shaving minutes

off the menial engineering processes

means additional time can be allocated to

productive tasks, which in the end means

more innovative products.

Founded in 1947, F.tech is a world class

certified Tier-1 international automotive

systems supplier, headquartered in Japan,

with a research and development office

located in Troy, OH.The company provides a

range of automotive components to its OEM

partners including subframes, trailing arms,

lower control arms and pedals.

F.tech R&D North America has full in-house

R&D capabilities including design, CAE,

prototyping, and testing. Having its own

research and development groups along

with design and engineering service teams

that work on CAE and testing lab validation.

F.tech R&D North America’s CAE team focus

on virtual design validation and makes

extensive use of simulation tools, including

Altair’s own HyperWorks suite. One of

the key tools used by F.tech from Altair is

HyperView, HyperWorks post-processing and

results visualization solution.

The ChallengeF.tech R&D North America utilizes HyperView

to investigate test results, using the

data to inform decisions on methods to

improve designs. This data will often be

used to create reports and presentations

IndustryAutomotive

ChallengeReduce the time taken to produce project reports

Altair SolutionImplemented the Automated Reporting Director to automatically extract results and export to PowerPoint

Benefits

• Standardized report generation

• Time saving of 80%

Key Highlights

R&D N.A.

"Altair ProductDesign was able to provide us with a customized program that precisely catered to our reporting needs, allowing more time to focus on the project."

during the development process, using

images and animations generated by

HyperView to illustrate particular areas of a

component where additional work may be

required. However, exporting these assets

is a highly manual process of loading in

results, positioning the model and taking

screenshots. To allow its engineers to

concentrate efforts on exploring and

interpreting the results, F.tech R&D North

America wanted a way of automating this

process.

Already having experience with HyperWorks

and knowledge of Altair’s reputation

within the engineering industry, F.tech

R&D North America reached out to the

company for a better process that could

help cut down on processing time, after

attending an Altair webinar in late 2013. The

consulting project was delegated to Altair

ProductDesign’s Enterprise Solutions Group

(ESG), a team which specializes in increasing

organizational efficiency by combining

tailored software solutions with customized

services.

Using the Automated Reporting Director inside of Hyperview, users have a table to enter data for checking several different types of analysis

James Smith Senior Design TechnicianF.tech R&D North America

F.tech R&D North America Success Story

Automating The Reporting ProcessAltair ProductDesign tackled the reporting

issues in two parts. First they evaluated

the 50 different testing metrics F.tech R&D

North America generally uses to generate a

report and made the recommendation that

Altair’s Automated Reporting Director (ARD)

could be implemented to help streamline

reporting activities.

Altair’s ARD is integrated directly into the

HyperView environment and is designed

to eliminate the tedious and repetitive

tasks associated with the mechanics of

generating reports. The solution automates

the detection of result maxima or hot spots,

best view selection, creation of notes and

legends, and highlights the most interesting

results in an interactive tab.

With an understanding of the current

process, Altair ProductDesign was able to

customize the ARD to meet company-wide

best practices and ensure it would work

seamlessly within the existing workflow.

Altair ProductDesign then trained key

members of F.tech R&D North America’s

engineering team on how to use the new

panels in HyperView effectively.

The customized ARD was set to record

results for static stiffness, static durability

with stress output, non-linear durability

permanent set displacement, and NVH

analysis, capturing the images, data tables

as well as gif animations required to create a

suitable report. Any future project with these

requirements will benefit from time savings

by using this program.

The ARD was implemented to run a report

for a project that had more than 20 static

durability load cases and more than 50

design iterations, which typically would take

an average of 4 hours for the F.tech R&D

North America team to create while manually

recording results. The ARD was able to

generate a report in just moments, and only

required a few minutes of customized data

entry before the program was run.

Reducing Reporting Time By 80%The ARD has become an invaluable asset for

F.tech R&D North Americato use whenever

an engineer has a need to create, exchange,

or present simulation result reports

internally and externally. The engineering

team is now able to better estimate the

length of time needed for report generation,

no matter if it’s a 10 page or 50 page report

or the variable being tested, with the team

reporting time savings of as much as 80%

in their report generation process compared

to its previous manual routine. This has

allowed the F.tech engineers to focus entirely

on interpreting and understanding the

results as opposed to manually creating the

required reports.

Find out more at:

www.altairproductdesign.com

Targets along with naming information are added into tables which automatically populates PowerPoint with results

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at www.altairproductdesign.com

Success Stories

Altair empowers client innovation and decision-making through technology that optimizes the analysis, management and visualization of business and engineering information. Privately held with more than 2,200 employees, Altair has offices throughout North America, South America, Europe and Asia/Pacific. With a 30-year-plus track record for high-end software and consulting services for engineering, computing and enterprise analytics, Altair consistently delivers a competitive advantage to customers in a broad range of industries. Altair has more than 5,000 corporate clients representing the automotive, aerospace, government and defense, and consumer products verticals. Altair also has a growing client presence in the electronics, architecture engineering and construction, and energy markets.

Altair ProductDesign is a global, multi-disciplinary product development consultancy of more than 800 designers, engineers, scientists, and creative thinkers. As a wholly owned subsidiary of Altair Engineering Inc., this organization is best known for its market leadership in combining its engineering expertise with computer aided engineering (CAE) technology to deliver innovation and automate processes. Altair ProductDesign utilizes proprietary simulation and optimization technologies (such as Altair HyperWorks) to help clients bring innovative, profitable products to market on a tighter, more efficient time-scale.

About Altair

About Altair ProductDesign

www.altairproductdesign.com

HyperWorks is an enterprise simulation solution for rapid design exploration and decision-making. As one of the most comprehensive, open-architecture CAE solutions in the industry, HyperWorks includes best-in-class modeling, analysis, visualization and data management solutions for linear, nonlinear, structural optimization, fluid-structure interaction, and multi-body dynamics applications.

About HyperWorks

www.altairhyperworks.com