Sony strips time out of outside broadcast vehicle production

The company has been using PTC Pro/Engineer to create the vehicles for the broadcast industry based on custom-built trailer or truck chassis, prior to equipping them with customised Sony technologies. “We integrate 19in rack-mounted products in every outside broadcast vehicle we build, but the traditional process to install each piece of equipment into the 3D model of each rack was taking a considerable amount of time,” says Adrian Plant, project design manager at Sony. “Thanks to PTC’s process that automates the population of our rack mounts within Pro/Engineer, we have been able to remove the bottleneck and the team is now expecting about a man year’s worth of work in time saving,” he adds. Plant explains that the design team is saving time by transferring basic spreadsheets of customer requirements into Pro/Engineer, which then automatically creates a complete and accurate 3D model of the rack-mounted units. That also enables Sony to show customers realistic views of their vehicles very early in the development process – meaning faster, better decision-making.