Matsushita Electronics had to upgrade development processes to match the rapid-fire pace of the consumer electronics industry. The company had to make designers more efficient; boost their collaboration with the rest of the development team and eliminate long delays caused by problems found late in the development cycle.

The approach

• Replace 2D-design software with 3D solid and surface modeling;
• Show lifelike digital models instead of drawings at reviews to get better feedback from team members; and
• Detect problems in digital prototypes; create error-free computer models and skip most physical prototypes.

How it worked...
Individual designers were 20% more productive with 2D. The overall design cycle decreased by 20% due to the efficiency and collaborative benefits of 3D and thereby prototyping time dropped by 65% while the overall product development time was reduced by 30%.

Big opportunity, small window
A new consumer electronics device is "hot" for just so long before the public’s fancy moves on to bigger and better (actually smaller and faster) things. Makers of these devices are under extreme pressure to develop products quickly because if they miss a market window by even three months, they can find themselves with a brand-new yet obsolete product on their hands.

Matsushita’s previous product development cycle was far too long for comfort in this fast-paced arena. The old 2D-design process had reached its threshold for higher productivity gain. Simple parts had to be redrawn repeatedly from scratch; design reviews were mostly inefficient until a prototype was made; and problems were found so late in the design cycle that new solutions would inevitably affect the pre-production schedule.

New approach: 3D modeling
The company’s Research and Development Division evaluated and convinced top management to bring in Unigraphics NX from EDS. Unigraphics NX was chosen for its strong tooling functionality and excellent freeform solid and surface modeling—ital requirements for modeling and manufacturing the graceful shapes of consumer devices. Another EDS product lifecycle management solution—Teamcenter Visualization—was used to impact Matsushita’s product development process.

Impact on designers
Unigraphics NX had a huge impact on the development process, starting with the designers but soon spreading out to the rest of the company. Design productivity rose 20% as designers used the software to automate many labor-intensive and tedious tasks such as plastic and metal component design. Design changes became instantaneous while the superior visualization of 3D made it possible to see at a glance what used to take pages of drawings. These benefits combined to cause a 20% reduction in Matsushita’s overall design cycle. For the rest of the company, the benefits of 3D come courtesy of Teamcenter Visualization.

"Team members now visualize and comment on designs at any time," says Masahiko Kurimoto, mechanical advisor, Matsushita Electronics. "This lets engineers refine the designs during the design phase, rather than at the end of it. Potential errors are identified earlier too, reducing the need for redesign."

The 3D collaboration benefits the Engineers and associates who are unfamiliar with reading 2D drawings can easily visualize a proposed product from a 3D digital mockup. Now, using PLM solutions from EDS, these professionals can influence product direction early in the development cycle, when their suggestions have the most impact.

And the most important result of 3D for Matsushita? A product development cycle that’s 30% faster. That means the company can have an idea for a new Panasonic product in production in six months. Addressing the constantly moving target of consumer taste, Matsushita strongly believes that in the near future its new design process will help to trim another 15% off its product development cycle.

TEAM DQ Inputs for this case study were received from the company