Capital Configuration Optimizer- Product Planner

Introduction

to Product Planner

Capital Configuration Optimizer is an add-on to Capital Systems Integrator. The two main elements of it are the Product Planner and the Harness Level Optimization tool. The Product Planner is a tool that allows you to model vehicle-level product plans, obtain information regarding permutations of orderable vehicles (VVDs) or domain-specific orderable vehicles (EVDs), and define volume and take rate information.

Note

Capital Configuration Optimizer requires a valid license in order to enable (expose) the functionality. Contact Capital Support to obtain a license.

The system administrator enables access to add-on functionality (such as Product Planner) by using license policies and user groups (see “License Policy” in the Capital Access Manager User Guide.

Data from the Product Planner is used as input by the Capital Configuration Optimizer - Harness Level Optimization tool.

Consumer

Choice versus Purchasing Reality

For most consumers the ability to purchase an automobile with exactly the features and options they want is often not possible. Their choices must fit within a pre-defined set of available options that may or may not be available in the combinations that they prefer. These restrictions to the customer’s purchasing freedom can lead to dissatisfied customers and potentially loss of sales.

Offering the customer freedom of choice clearly has an economic benefit. In the following, we review how option content affects the way in which a vehicle can be purchased. Later, we look at how these permutations of possibilities affect the engineering domain.

Unconstrained

Vehicle Complexity

To begin, consider how option content affects the whole vehicle. The following example is a very simple case in which there are three options: Hand of drive (LHD/RHD), Fog Lamps and Anti-lock Brakes. Since there are no constraints in how these options can be ordered, the number of possible ways to order this vehicle is eight.

Essentially, every new option doubles the number of possible permutations as is represented by the simple formula of 2n. This is an oversimplification, but the point is that as the number of options increases, the number of orderable possibilities increases at an exponential rate. An average vehicle could easily have hundreds of options to choose from which can lead to billions of possibilities, or more.

Constrained

Vehicle Complexity

To reduce this exponential increase of orderable possibilities, the marketing departments of automotive OEMs eliminate orderable possibilities by applying restrictions. These restrictions constrain the permutations, but at the cost of hindering consumer choice.

Using the previous example, assume that marketing research shows that in RHD markets most consumers typically purchase Fog Lamps. To constrain the complexity, they may then decide to create a restriction that all RHD vehicles must-have Fog Lamps. The effect of this is that entire branches of the tree are eliminated. In the following diagram, note that the final number of orderable combinations is reduced to six.

While this has constrained the vehicle complexity, it has added an additional burden to the organization as there is now a restriction (RHD must-have Fog Lamps) that the system must document, understand, and take into account in designs.

Composite

Wire Harness Complexity

Any product that varies based on the ordered options must have a method of coping with this variation. For example, if a wire harness has a connector for the Fog Lamp bulbs, then you must use a method of supporting vehicles that have the bulbs and supporting vehicles that do not have the bulb.

One method is called a modular approach, where each option is released as a unique module. When the option content of a specific vehicle is known, the various modules are combined with a base harness to create a custom wire harness for that specific vehicle.

A more common approach is a composite (or derivative) design approach, in which unique designs are released for each possible combination. In the above example, there would have to be derivatives that have fog lamps and some that do not. It is this approach that Capital Configuration Optimizer supports.

Unconstrained

Harness Complexity

The optional wiring content defines for which options a given harness is made complex. Just as adding options at a vehicle level causes an exponential growth in the number of orderable possibilities.

Consider the previous example. Assume that this very simple vehicle has a very simple wire harness architecture consisting of two wire harnesses. The first has wiring content for Fog Lamps and is routed differently depending upon the hand-of-drive (LHD or RHD). The second has wiring for the Antilock Brake System. The resulting complexity displays in Figure 440.

Figure 440: Unconstrained Harness Complexity

There are a total of five harness levels (or derivatives) for the entire vehicle. If another option were added to Harness 1, the number of levels would double from three to six. Note that in Harness 1 there is no level that is RHD without Fog Lamps. Remember that earlier the OEM Marketing department stated that the RHD must have Fog Lamps. The engineer for this harness has had to understand that restriction, interpret it, and act accordingly to remove that level from the complexity.

Harness

Complexity with Giveaway

Just as additional options can exponentially increase the number of orderable permutations of vehicles, the same is true for harness complexity. You have already seen how Marketing can constrain the vehicle complexity through restricting how a customer can order the vehicle. Engineers likewise have a mechanism for constraining harness complexity. This is called giveaway. Giveaway occurs when an engineer decides to delete a level that is missing optional content and replace it with a level that has the content. Consider Harness 1 from our previous example. If the engineer decides to giveaway Fog Lamps, one level is eliminated.

Note that this in no way changes how the customer orders the vehicle. If the vehicle is ordered without Fog Lamps, the vehicle still does not have functioning Fog Lamps because the necessary switches, bulbs fuses, and so on, are missing. However, a wire harness that has the necessary wiring is in the vehicle. This additional wiring has an associated cost and weight that must be accounted for. It can be challenging to understand exactly what these costs are.

Complexity

Management Costs

As already covered, Marketing departments and engineers are working to constrain complexity and eliminate orderable possibilities. This can have a negative impact on customer satisfaction and ordering habits and has a costly impact in the engineering domain. Since there are clearly negative impacts to constraining the complexity, why would you do it?

There are costs that increase as the number of levels increases. These are called Complexity Management costs. The following are just a few examples. There are many other types depending on the engineering and business realities of the organization.

Production Costs There are many areas where production costs increase. A simple example is in-line changeover. Production processes are most efficient when there is as little variation in the vehicles being constructed as possible. A unique level is by definition a unique variation of the vehicle. The need to stop the line, make the appropriate changes to the tooling/fixtures, then start the line again is inefficient and costly.
Sequencing As the number of harness levels increases, it becomes impossible for the vehicle production line to physically house bins for each level because there is not enough floor space. The alternative is to have an external facility (normally a third party) to house these parts, then ship them into the plant in sequenced order based on the vehicle production sequence. This can become extremely expensive.
Inventory As the number of harness levels increases, you must maintain more inventory throughout the manufacturing process. This leads to additional storage space and additional costs for logistics and rework.
Obsolescence There are a number of ways in which this can be costly. One example is end-of-year obsolescence as new designs come in for the new vehicle. Most suppliers only ship parts in minimum pack sizes (usually around thirty parts to a box). If during the year you have used only one part out of the box, you must destroy, rework, or recycle the other twenty nine. As the number of harness levels increases, the production volumes of each level decrease and lead to more of this type of obsolescence.

Complete

Cost Model

To accurately understand how complexity affects the final cost of a product, it is imperative that not only the implications of piece costs be understood, but the complexity management costs as well.

A purely piece cost view of the world acts as an incentive for the organization to eliminate as much giveaway as possible which results in a large number of harness levels. This is shown in the curve that decreases left to right in the figure below.

A purely complexity management cost view of the world acts as an incentive for using maximum giveaway to reduce the number of levels to as few as possible. This is the linearly increasing line in the figure.

If we combine these two views of the world into a complete view of the design, we can find an optimal solution as shown in the bowl shaped curve, which is the addition of the other two functions. Note that this is an idealized view of the cost models. Real-world models have different shapes depending upon business realities, but the concept still stands.

Process

Overview

Capital Configuration Optimizer assists the design process by automatically generating the unconstrained wire harness complexity (called full complexity), then by allowing the user to define giveaway scenarios and immediately feeding back the resulting cost implications. Additionally, it can validate that an existing design meets all of the requirements of the full complexity solution. To understand this, below is a very high-level flow.

Note that there are three primary inputs needed to create harness complexity:

A product plan describes the options, vehicle models, restrictions, and so on. It can also optionally describe the take rates for each option so that you can calculate the expected volumes of all orderable possibilities.
The system designs describe the logical connectivity of the electrical system. These designs are tagged with option expressions so that it is understood how the connectivity changes based on the ordered options.
The wiring architecture describes the physical aspects of the design in a topological manner. The key concepts are what are the harnesses, what device connectors are they connected to, and how do all of the harnesses interconnect through inlines.

Once the three primary inputs are understood, Capital Configuration Optimizer can automatically calculate the full complexity requirements.

Based on the full complexity requirement, the user can then define giveaway in the Harness Level Optimization step.

Once an optimal giveaway solution is found and the final harness complexity is chosen, the resulting levels can automatically be used during Composite Wiring Design in a generative flow. This process creates physical wiring for each harness level.

Lastly, the Design Validation step allows the user to compare a design against a set of full complexity requirements. This can be useful for:

Ensuring that a released design still meets the requirements and has not been inadvertently altered.
Determining whether new marketing requirements invalidate a previously released design.
Confirming that an externally created complexity solution meets the complete vehicle requirements and determining the cost associated with this complexity solution.

For a more detailed description of the individual steps in this process, see High-Level Flows for Using Capital Configuration Optimizer Product Planner and Harness Level Optimization.

Parent Topic:

Capital Configuration Optimizer- Product Planner