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| Case Study |
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Material Property Analysis reduces time-to-design
for accelerated development of new products |
By partnering with
Patni's solution for Material Property Analysis helps a leading equipment manufacturer for commercial and
military aircrafts reshape its product design strategy.
The Client
The client is a large Fortune 100 company that
manufactures equipments for commercial and military
aircrafts.
The Challenge
The client enjoys an enviable reputation for commercializing new ideas. Since the
early 1990s, it has focused on the selection of the right type of material to reduce
the cost and time for designing and introducing new products to the market.
Accordingly, analysis of material property receives significant attention during
the design phase of product development. A system based on client server
technology served the client's needs for storing and analyzing material data.
However, with the passage of time, the limitations of the system started
emerging. Markets had become specialized, competitive dynamics had changed
and so had the client's business model. Material Property Analysis assumed new
dimensions and placed new demands on the system. Some of the key challenges
included:
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Manual operations for publishing data to users of analysis:Engineers
had to follow multiple manual steps to execute program files for
calculating electronic structures and molecular dynamics simulations |
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Data inaccessibility by partners in the design chain: Information locked
in the system was inaccessible to the external users of the partner
organization who developed subassemblies |
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Future proofing the System: The inward-looking architecture of the
current system did not allow integration with other applications.
Consequently, the system did not interoperate with the Product Data
Management system. Transformation into an Internet-native architecture
was important to facilitate integration with other systems and enable
collaboration with the participants in the design process |
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Maintenance and upgradation of system: Limited technical know-how of
the system among the client's staff and non-availability of documentation
posed difficulty |
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User Interface Improvements: The user interface was unfriendly to the
system administrator and end-users. |
The above challenges made it obvious that an integrated system was crucial to
eliminate the manual steps involved in publishing results of Material
Property Analysis.
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The Solution
The client sought Patni's services to build IT capabilities aimed at
effectively analyzing material property. A detailed study of the client's
processes and capabilities of its existing systems highlighted that a
web-based application with a robust querying mechanism was an ideal
solution. Accordingly, Patni developed a J2EE based application that
generated extract files required for evaluating the material property
behavior. Apart from facilitating extrapolations/interpolations, the
new application also allowed graphical comparisons of data. It provided
secure and role-based database access to all the participants in the
design phase both from the client's organization as well as its partner
organizations. Patni helped the client in migrating the data from the
earlier client-server based system to ensure production transfer to the
new system.
After successfully laying the foundation of material property analysis,
Patni established the integration between the new system and eMatrix's
collaborative design platform to accelerate development of new
products.
The Technology
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J2EE Architecture |
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BEA WebLogic App Server |
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eMatrix 9.6 |
The Benefits
Patni helped the client enable a seamless transition from its Material
Data system to a system which provides a much better and efficient
analysis of Material property. The new solution has also improved access
to design data, and shortened the time-to-design. Other benefits
include:
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Easy access to Material property data |
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Automatic generation of Extract files for Material Analysis |
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Reduced design lead-time due to integration between material
analysis and design process |
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Design chain collaboration due to Internet native architecture. |
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