Delphi gets more patents for design methodologies

Automotive giant Delphi’s Technologies business unit lat month received further validation of its design methodology standards, with two more patents. Delphi’s Design Methodologies (DDMs) are used in CAD/CAM at, for example, Delphi Steering, and increasingly throughout the company, to help reduce product and process design costs and increase productivity in the design-to-manufacturing cycle. Experience has shown that using their existing CAD software, designers get higher quality 3D models that are easier to edit in design, engineering and downstream functions. Like Six Sigma, the business benefits of DDM include reduced cycle times, faster change processing, reduced waste, greater efficiency and ultimately faster time to market. Diane Landers, CAD coordinator at Delphi Steering, and one of the inventors of the methods, says: “The first [new] patent has a feature that allows for a 3D in-process model element to link to its corresponding 3D master model, while being in a different file location. “This allows complete machining sequences and operations to be performed without encountering file size limitations, providing greater business flexibility and efficiency in the process.” The second patented design – the vertical to horizontal conversion process – converts vertical models into a horizontal format. This helps minimise the amount of rework required to use legacy data and increases design reuse. “This may allow engineers to salvage old data by reconstructing a portion of the feature structure of the data, thus making it useful to a new design,” says Kevin Marseilles, advanced manufacturing designer at Delphi Steering, another inventor of the methods. “In turn, this prevents designers from reinventing the wheel, so to speak, by using successful work and building on it.” David Prawel, president of consulting firm Longview Advisor, says more divisions in Delphi are now adopting the standard methodologies, alongside companies outside the Delphi empire. “We are seeing improvements of 65% time saving in design processes involving editing models using horizontal modelling,” he says. He says that rises to 90% where companies are editing process models. “The gains are bigger for more complex processes: through designers working with production engineers.” The point is that while everyone has methods, there aren’t CAD standards. “We always run into CAD guys who say we’ve got bits of that, but every designer does it their own way,” says Prawel. “We haven’ found one company that has gone through all their great ideas and made them their standard and measured and validated them.” As yet, there’s been limited adoption of the Delphi standards in Europe, because the company hasn’t pushed them over here. Prawell indicates that Delphi Technologies is busy satisfying US demand. He believes that UK companies are only going to get the benefits by asking for them. “Spread of the standards will be by pull demand,” he says.