A picture might be worth a thousand words, but in manufacturing, one good 3D drawing is worth thousands of euros. Spanish truck-trailer maker Fruehauf S.A. found that out when it implemented new design software that corrected serious manufacturing flaws and improved partner relations in the first part of a PLM and IT revamp.

Madrid-based Fruehauf makes more than 2,000 semi-trailers a year for the construction industry, over half of them built to order. Semi-trailers — the containers and flat beds that attach to motorized cabs and haul everything from soil to timber to machines — come in a raft of shapes and sizes. One of the most difficult to make is what the industry calls a “tipper” — a dump truck. With various moving parts, chassis, stabilizers, crossbars, bumpers, flaps, and doors, a seemingly minor inaccuracy in the blueprints can lead to a finished product that gets stuck when it tilts up.

“You have to be very careful not to collide one with the other, to make sure that when the body tilts up, it won’t collide with the other parts,” says Juan Manuel Ortego Bielsa, head of research, development, and technical innovation at Fruehauf.

Unfortunately for Fruehauf, it has plenty of firsthand knowledge of the hazards of imprecision. Until last year, things were, you might say, going bump in the height. Brand new tippers it had produced on demand to feed Spain’s then-booming construction industry were jamming, forcing the company to redesign and reassemble. The problems were straining relations between design teams and Fruehauf’s plants in Madrid; Ciudad Real, Spain; and Rio Maior, Portugal, and with subcontractors such as MSR Trailer and Mursem. Subcontractors sometimes build the upper portion of Fruehauf’s semi-trailers while Fruehauf builds the chassis.

The root of the problem was a two-dimensional design software program from Smart Sketch that designers and plant workers could not read clearly or that left too many variables to guesswork. “We could only see collisions once the product had been made,” Ortego Bielsa recalls.

So last year, in the first step of a planned overhaul of antiquated IT systems, Fruehauf implemented Solid Edge 3D CAD software from Siemens, after evaluating CATIA from Dassault Systemes and SolidWorks from SolidWorks Corp., a Dassault company.

The result: Fruehauf’s dump trucks are tilting flawlessly right off the production line, eliminating the need for tedious, costly reassembly. Because the new 3D designs simulate a product’s operation before production even begins, “you’re able to see if a part is going to collide with another,” Ortego Bielsa says. “It’s led to a better understanding with subcontractors.” It has also helped Fruehauf reduce its materials costs, he adds.

The clarity has yielded other benefits as well: Ortego Bielsa says that Solid Edge’s user-friendliness has effectively cut the company’s time to market in half. In seven months last year, Fruehauf designed as many trailers and parts as it did in all of 2006, he says. 

According to Ortego Bielsa, Fruehauf implemented Solid Edge in one month. The company spent €55,000 on six licenses for 12 users. It’s eying an ROI of two-and-a-half years from staff reductions and other efficiencies, Ortego Bielsa says. The company has already let go two designers.

The Solid Edge deployment was the first step in a set of sweeping IT changes that Fruehauf is planning in order to stay competitive. For decades the market leader, Fruehauf started slipping in the 1990s. “Our engineering was in a sense a bit old-fashioned,’’ Ortego Bielsa concedes. “By 2006, we realized that if we didn’t change, we were going to drop in our sales. We needed a change in engineering and production on all levels.”

Next up: Fruehauf plans to implement a product data management (PDM) system. It had hoped to have installed one by now, but the Spanish construction industry has stalled amid a harsh version of the same credit and general economic pressures afflicting the housing and construction industry in many countries.

In an April report, Royal Bank of Scotland pointed out that Spanish housing prices had risen well above fair value and that the construction industry’s share of GDP had surged to an unsustainably high level, well above its average. It forecast a difficult period of adjustment, noting that “the eventual bursting of asset price bubbles will also dampen domestic demand, as falling asset prices depress households’ net wealth.”

Translated, that means manufacturers that supply the construction industry are paring back their own forecasts. Fruehauf has trimmed a planned 15% increase in output this year but is optimistically targeting 3,000 units in 2009 — up from 2,100 semi-trailers last year.

Ortego Bielsa says Fruehauf now hopes to implement PDM software in August and is evaluating products from Siemens and others. The first step will be to integrate Solid Edge with Fruehauf’s own manufacturing shops and with subcontractors such as Mursem and MSR.

Later, the company also hopes to integrate with vendors such as Mercedes, Meritor, Michelin, Goodyear, Firestone, Finnforest, and Wabco, which supply Fruehauf with various components, such as tires, wooden floors, and brakes. Longer term, Fruehauf wants to integrate design information into its Navision ERP system, leading to a smoother “bill of material” flow, Ortego Bielsa says. Today, it costs Fruehauf about €30,000 a year to re-enter information manually.

It’s all part of the bigger plan to claw back market share. In Fruehauf’s IT activities, it started with the design change. Sometimes, to regain former glory, you literally have to go back to the drawing board.