Case Study: Carraro Group Reduces Design Errors 25% with Capital Essentials

This is a useful case study for the "smaller/mid-market" end of Capital's customer base — Carraro Agritalia designs powertrain and electrical systems for agricultural machinery (tractors, combine harvesters), a very different scale/segment than the Airbus/Boeing aerospace examples elsewhere in this knowledge base.

Challenges

• Errors during wiring/harness design were difficult to identify and correct before manufacturing.
• Post-production faults created costly delays and recall risk.
• The prior design tool lacked design rule checks (DRCs) and couldn't efficiently track errors.
• Manual parts assignment was time-consuming and error-prone.
• Complex powertrain requirements for heavy equipment exceeded the capabilities of the team's existing (primitive) simulation tools.

Solution

Carraro Agritalia implemented Siemens Capital Essentials, chosen specifically for its intuitive interface and value proposition relative to full Capital. Deployment details:

• Integrated harness design with wiring functionality for seamless data transfer between the two
• Built a custom library of electrical component models aligned to company specifications
• Set up automated checklists and test sessions for early schematic validation
• Applied design rule checks to catch errors before manufacturing
• Automated generation of production-ready drawings and bills of materials
• Implementation support from solution partner Har-Tech

Specific tools used

• Capital Essentials (primary tool)
• Capital E/E Insight
• Capital Wiring Designer Essentials
• Integration with 3D CAD systems and PLM solutions

Quantified results

• 25% reduction in design error probability
• 50% reduction in functional test time
• 20% increase in harness quality
• Improved post-sales fault detection efficiency
• License expansion from 2 → 7 seats due to productivity gains (a concrete adoption signal)

Key quote

Paolo Righetti, Electrical Competence Center Director: "By using Capital Essentials, we can eliminate errors, accelerate time-to-market with new products and be confident customers won't waste time fixing machinery."

Practical takeaway

This case study is a good counterpoint to the aerospace/automotive-giant examples: it demonstrates that the Essentials tier (lighter-weight, lower cost than full Capital Harness Designer/Logic Designer) is being used successfully by mid-size industrial manufacturers, and that the license-count growth (2→7) is itself a proxy metric worth citing when evaluating ROI on smaller deployments.