More connected vehicles means fewer mechanical parts and more electrical systems. The need of the hour translates into offering solutions that enable ‘intelligent mechanical systems’.
The 18-year-old Satyam-Venture Engineering Services (Satven) is doing exactly that, besides offering a wide range of engineering solutions with technological innovations to OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers. The solutions include product design and development, full vehicle crash, NVH, durability, value analysis and engineering, dimensional management, sourcing, manufacturing engineering, myriad non-linear and linear FEA, CFD and multi-body dynamics, among others.
Satven has engineering centers both in Germany and India to cater to its discerning customers who wish to overcome the challenges created by the increasing complexities in automobile engineering. And that is where Satven’s ‘model-based design’ comes into play which has also been the driving force for establishing ‘mechatronic’ laboratory.
Mr. J. Bala Subramanyam, Principal Consultant, Satyam-Venture Engineering Services, shares: “About an year ago, Satven entered into automotive mechatronics. We have established a mechatronics laboratory with test bench set up for development, analysis, testing and functional verification of various ECUs for automotive systems and sub-systems. Earlier Satven was supporting OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers in designing sub-systems and components. Nowadays, we are providing complete packaged solutions to our customers by integrating mechanical and mechatronics areas.”
Technological innovations taking place in the automotive industry and the increase in the use of electronics to build ‘intelligent mechanical systems’ brings its own challenges increasing the complexity for the automobile engineers.
His associate, Mr. Vignan Tej Kuppili, Project Lead at Satven, adds: “Previously it was all hard coding for designing specific modules complementing all the automotive safety standards which used to take us 6-8 months to get even the basic functionality right. Now, with model-based design, we are squeezing the time to a couple of months or so in the mechatronics division. Right now, we are capable of delivering functionalities like body control modules, besides which we are also expanding into android-based infotainment.”
Mechatronics as a service
Traditionally, Satven’s main capabilities have been CAD and CAE for mechanical systems, besides offering competitor analysis for their worldwide customers, including top OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers. But their latest mechatronics laboratory is equipped with VT systems hardware, MATLAB and Simulink software to support model based design, validation and testing activities. They also support in PCB design, layout and other services till prototype and support in Design-for-Manufacturing or DFM.
Mr. Kuppili says: “Recently, we have started the IoT framework-based real time testing solutions. But generally the OEMs and the Tier-1 companies have test beds at their own premises, and it is difficult to outsource testing for them because of their intellectual property norms. What we are now making them aware of is that our solutions allow them to retain the test bed at their own locations but that they can give us only the APIs on which our off-shore test engineers can work on. With real time access there can be greater collaboration between the development and test engineers resulting in faster deliveries.”
According to him, this way the clients can give API calls to Satven and then have all their tests run at any global location of theirs – a huge advantage that their clients are cashing in on.
Industrial IoT
Even in the manufacturing side, Satven is assisting OEMs and Tier-1s in setting up systems for remote monitoring and predictive maintenance. With an aggressive push towards Industry 4.0 standards where the machines are not merely automated but also can communicate with each other and transform into self-aware cyber-physical systems.
In this context, Satven provides services right from feasibility studies, identification of sensors, networking, creating edge gateways including edge analytics. In the larger picture, the data is correlated and processed in cloud analytics platforms to provide information for business intelligence and predictive maintenance too.
Digital manufacturing
Other than mechatronics, Satven is making forays into digital manufacturing to carry out factory and layout designing and validation of equipment for the automotive sector.
Mr. Kuppili adds: “Besides these, we also offer digital line balancing solutions to help companies optimize their manufacturing to reduce faulty processes. Also, for example, an automotive manufacturer has to take care of tooling in terms of usability and facility management say designing optimal physical space for access to its engineer to perform the necessary operation on the machinery. We offer to do that digitally.”
Mr. Subramanyam further says: “Our endeavour has always been to help our clients reduce their cycle time drastically.”
Catering to EVs
Satven is prepared to cater to EVs when they become a closer reality in India.
Mr. Subramanyam agrees: “Recently we have started a few initiatives of our own which include solutions for the EVs and hybrids too. In all battery-operated vehicles, the battery and power management are critical factors. So we began doing in-house projects to showcase to customers and impress upon them that these can be scaled to bigger projects as well.”
Expanding on it, Mr. Kuppili says: “We are developing the software in the algorithms of charging to manage the batteries. As a back end service provider, if our clients require any improvements, we will suggest them and also do benchmarking, competitor analysis and come up with better algorithms or optimize them.”
A company that began operations 18 years ago with 20 employees is now 1,700 people strong and is delivering solutions for upcoming engineering trends in the automotive sector by embracing and offering intelligent solutions that are on par with the global platforms.