The Key to Evolving Under the Reform of Auto Industry
Nowadays, the entire automotive industry is under reform, resulting in competitions more intense than ever before.
As a long-established automaker, Dongfeng Liuzhou Motor Co., Ltd. (DFLZM for short) has always been at the forefront of advancing auto manufacturing technologies. Benchmarking their models against mainstream products, DFLZM maintains its competitive advantage by improving the fuel economy, comfort, and safety of automobiles.
“The products of DFLZM always sell by word of mouth. We insist on winning the recognition of various market segments with highly cost-effective and practical products.” Director Mo from the technical center has more in-depth insights into informatization, which he oversees and is crucial to strengthening DFLZM. He explained, “To achieve our development goals in the challenging industrial revolution, we have prioritized the integration of informatization and industrialization to build up our core strengths and elevate manufacturing management. Only by doing so can we become more innovative in design and speedier in responding to the market.”
Figure 1. The headquarters of DFLZM covers an area of nearly 3.5 million square meters
Rise to Industrial Challenges with Upgraded ZWSOFT Solutions
Manufacturing vehicles is utterly complex with a high degree of specialization and technicality. As introduced, the R&D at DFLZM starts from model planning and involves a multiplicity of CAD, CAM, and CAE software in steps like product definitions, general layout design, system design, trial production, product testing, small-batch pilot production, pilot sales, and mass production.
“Our model design is multi-disciplinary, accompanied with a complicated internal informatization environment and a large amount of data sources that need integrating. It led to a situation where a single CAD program is insufficient for us,” Director Mo continued to say, “Therefore, we will choose software according to specific applications. We require that the CAD software must be practical, easy-to-use, and highly compatible. Also, its supplier should provide professional, reliable, and timely technical support.” Moreover, because of the rapid IT development and software iteration, enterprises would attach importance to the development path of suppliers, to cater to their business development and phased informatization goals.
After careful consideration, DFLZM decided to introduce ZWSOFT solutions to the core departments, including ZWCAD, ZWCAD Mechanical, ZW3D, etc. “So far, over 300 designers and manufacturers at DFLZM make good use of ZWCAD and hence improve their productivity. At the same time, ZWCAD and our PLM system have been seamlessly integrated. It means that the attributes in drawings can be automatically extracted to the PLM system, the design data are shared promptly, and the collaboration becomes more efficient,” Director Mo continued to point out, “More importantly, ZWSOFT is prospering steadily and owns robust self-developed technologies, which lays a solid foundation for our long-term collaboration.”
Figure 2. Engineers at DFLZM designing with ZWCAD
ZWSOFT Maximizes Software with Leading CAD Technologies and Customization Service
“The relationship between DFLZM and ZWSOFT has lasted for almost 13 years. Thanks to the consistent efforts of the ZWSOFT R&D team, products like ZWCAD and ZW3D have become more powerful. As a corporate user, DFLZM has benefited a lot from their solutions in terms of business growth,” Director Mo acknowledged.
According to him, ZWSOFT solutions help further improve the efficiency of design and innovation as well as solve the “inefficient data conversion” issue between the informatization system and CAD software. What’s more, along with ZWSOFT’s application R&D team, they developed an add-on that automatically converts .dwg drawings into .pdf files. With this tool, the approved DWGs in their PLM system can automatically turn into PDFs and be sent to third parties. Plus, since recognizing frames, selecting suitable paper sizes, toggling printing modes, selecting plot styles, etc. have been automated, drawing conversion is greatly simplified and the quality of PDF output guaranteed. Director Mo praised, “The customization development service of ZWSOFT meets the practical needs of manufacturers, helps us improve efficiency and ensure design quality.”
After all these years’ testing, ZWSOFT solutions have proven to be helping DFLZM yield good returns: product designs are created efficiently with useful functions; the perpetual licenses streamline license management and save them software overheads. At present, they have informatized major businesses and data coordination, so that the collaboration among R&D, production, and business together drive their business to prosper.
Figure 3. A showcase of DFLZM models
In the face of challenges in the new era, Director Mo has high hopes for ZWOSFT, “We have faith in ZWSOFT because it is a leading engineering solutions provider who can address user needs, upgrade its self-developed core CAx technologies, better the quality and applicability of its products, and satisfy the demands for intelligent manufacturing.”
(All image courtesy of DFLZM)
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