Engineering Outsourcing - No longer just creating 3D models or making drawings

The main objective of this paper is to highlight the evolving change of customers perspective on engineering outsourcing and narrate the story on how TCS responded to this and became successful. This paper highlights couple of projects as examples. It highlights the typical industry needs in product engineering and narrates how such needs are effectively met. The various competencies identified and developed by TCS and experiences on similar lines are described in this paper. This paper also summarises the changed needs of the customer and key factors for success in engineering outsourcing. Keywords New Product Development (NPD), Competencies, Dimensional Management, Value Analysis and Value Engineering (VA/VE), Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA), Design for Manufacturability, Assembly and Serviceability (DFX)

Engineering Outsourcing - No longer just creating 3D models or making drawings

About the Authors

Loganathan Manickam
Head, Domain and Technology Industrial Machinery and Transportation Vertical Engineering and Industrial Services Tata Consultancy Services

Loganathan Manickam is heading the Domain and Technology group of Industrial Machiner y and Transportation vertical under Engineering & Industrial Services unit of TCS. He has been with TCS since 1999, worked as Program Manager for a large design migration project for a locomotive OEM, set-up an offshore engineering centre, worked as Business Relationship Manager and Head of Global Engineering Centre for a large customer. He is a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering, Six Sigma Black Belt and Certified Quality Analyst. He has over 20 years experience in manufacturing industries with specialisation in product engineering, production engineering associated with machine tools, automotive, transportation, foundry and forging. Prior to TCS, worked as Executive In-charge for CAD/CAM, CNC & 3D CMM tool room of a leading Truck OEM group company in India and as a Manager-CNC machine shop for an auto ancillary manufacturing organisation in overseas. Ramanatha Shet
Lead, Product Design Industrial machinery vertical Engineering and Industrial Services Tata Consultancy Services

Ramanatha Shet is leading the product engineering projects of Industrial Machinery vertical. He has been with Tata Consultancy Services since 2000 working on setting up a global engineering centre for OEMs, program management, competency development and executing engineering projects in the domain of material handling equipments and heavy engineering. Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering, he has over 18 years of experience with specialisation in hydraulics. He worked earlier in L&TKomatsu and BEML in the area of product engineering of offhighway vehicle systems.

Engineering Outsourcing - No longer just creating 3D models or making drawings

Table of Contents
1. Introduction - The change has arrived 2. The new journey of TCS adopting the change 3. Carving the path for a design power house 4. Summary 3 3 5 8

Engineering Outsourcing - No longer just creating 3D models or making drawings

Introduction - The change has arrived

A decade back, when engineering outsourcing was still in its nascent stage, the work offshored to India predominantly involved creating digital models and drawings. The design activity was not outsourced to India because of various reasons such as concerns with regard to intellectual property, lack of resources with domain knowledge and above all lack of understanding on what really works with outsourcing. The effective collaboration and coordination between the service receiver and service provider were the keys to success in this model and the time spent on the same became a matter of concern to those who were interacting with service providers. As a trend, companies started looking at solutions with increased ownership from service providers to move out from day-today monitoring and reviewing of the project. The modelling and detailing encompassed only a portion of the bigger picture (piece-meal type of outsourcing) and companies clearly sensed the need to shift to a bigger chunk of work where increased ownership on the design had to be demonstrated by the service providers. The customers started seeing the need to realise Value arbitrage from the engagement to bring competitive products to the market with less overall program spending. The ability of service providers to understand the customer product lines is becoming an important factor in choosing the right service provider.

The new journey of TCS adopting the change

The Engineering and Industrial Services (EIS) unit of TCS observed the evolving change in the needs of the customer and aligned its internal strategy to build series of new competencies to support the customer. The set of competencies required to support customers in the complete product development program involved working at several layers apart from modelling and detailing. The journey never stopped with just product design. TCS increased the focus and developed a whole range of peripheral competencies around product design such as Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE), Digital Manufacturing, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Technical Publications, Sourcing and Manufacturing services, Plant solutions, Integrated Asset Management, Remote Monitoring and Diagnostics and Geospatial solutions such that all elements of a product life cycle starting from product design, manufacturing through post sales can be addressed in a global engineering environment. The new competencies helped TCS successfully complete several product design and development projects. For example, Industrial Machinery group of EIS has been providing product design services to power machinery, material handling, and earth moving sector. This group has completed several projects and offered services in the broader spectrum of product design and development programs to global customers. Outlined here are two such examples.

Example 1: New Generation Forklift Truck Development

This example demonstrates how TCS helped one of the reputed global manufacturers to develop new generation forklift trucks. In this relationship, the customer embarked on a development program for a new generation of lift trucks. In this program, eight different truck platforms were designed to cover different tonnage. These eight truck platforms had to be designed and developed concurrently, to ensure commonality of parts and modularity in design. TCS deployed a team of domain experts with industry experience in material handling equipment design. This team worked on different areas of forklift such as chassis, mast, engine accessories, radiator, transmission, axle, brake, hydraulics, operator compartment, electrical harness and so on, both at the onsite customer location as well as at offshore.

Engineering Outsourcing - No longer just creating 3D models or making drawings

TCSs team of design engineers developed different concepts in conjunction with the customers design team for sub-systems and components of different truck platforms, to ensure modularity and commonality of parts. The customer and manufacturing suppliers reviewed the design concepts in several design review sessions. Later, the qualified design concepts were engineered to meet the quality and reliability standards that the customer had defined. The services provided were in the areas of design, Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and release of digital model of truck and engineering specification drawings. In this program, TCSs team provided design support to all the phases of product development namely concept design, detailed design, design validation, prototyping and post production.

Example 2: End-to-End support for a New Product Development (NPD) of locomotive engine
Here is an example of how TCS pro-actively collaborated with one of the leading locomotive manufacturers to support the development of a new product though the initial scope was limited to technology challenge on digitisation such as building 3D models and design documents. The customer was migrating from one design to another for improving the product performance, regulatory compliance, reliability and cost. The customer had the design in native format, legacy hard copy design documents and working engine sub-systems such as cylinder head, crank case and other accessories as a reference to capture critical design parameters. In this program, TCS deployed domain consultants to work with the customer on engineering collaboration. TCS instigated a systematic approach to deal with customers pain areas by studying critical elements of the locomotive engine systems. Accordingly, TCS worked with the customer and amplified the scope in order to accomplish anticipated changes in design for various requirements including suggestion to customer to adopt a re-design approach considering global engineering design methodology enabled through PLM based concurrence engineering. Accordingly, TCS deployed the following solution: 1. Decision making process has been followed. Accordingly, a study was conducted to ascertain re-design intent If the intent is just a digitisation, best practices of parametric and master model concept were implemented to accommodate future changes (design best practices). If it is for a cause, further analysis was performed to drill down actions such as design for performance, design for reliability, design for regulatory and design for manufacturability. The new design had to address the current manufacturing challenges and new set of challenges in foundry methods and tooling due to switching over to alternate global sourcing for casting, forging and machining. Deploy appropriate design steps by forming dedicated teams with key Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) from industry and technology domain to carry out activities in collaboration with the customer

2.

3.

Engineering Outsourcing - No longer just creating 3D models or making drawings

The following tasks were performed for a sample Power Train sub-system: a) Reverse engineering the inlet and exhaust air passage and build the cylinder head (vendor coordination for measurement, data portability, model building and CFD analysis) Addressing structural design changes to accommodate hybrid design, changes due to redesigned rocker assembly and cover fitment (design for reliability and should costing) Designing for manufacturability (work closely with manufacturing vendors in addressing issues related to foundry methods, tooling and machining) Involving in development of other sub-systems in locomotive engine

b)

c)

d)

The concurrent effort in addressing the above-mentioned issues and improvements resulted in cost benefits, established global design and manufacturability/LCC migration, served as a strong technology framework for growing global engineering needs.

Carving the path for a design power house

The typical needs of the industry practicing product design and development programs are: ! Domain and Technology Whether service provider can understand the product being developed and is abreast of latest applicable technologies Global Engineering and Process Whether service provider is experienced with global engineering and its process

While TCS responded to domain and technology needs through various initiatives such as having industry experienced domain professionals on board, consolidating in-house experience, and industry alliances, it responded to the engineering and process needs by targeting broadly in two areas New competency development and then developing right echo system.

New Competency development

Following are some of the new competencies that TCS has mastered over the last few years: Dimensional Management (Tolerance Stack-up) - Whether the tolerances are right, productive and optimised? TCS team does not depend on the customer to select the right tolerance unless it is governed by customer specific historical data. TCS has an internal Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) certification program followed by rigorous training on stack-up analysis projects using some of the best breed software available in the world. TCS has about 200 engineers certified by the GD&T internal certification program as per American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) standards. The program tremendously improves the knowledge level on GD&T and makes engineers competent to understand and appreciate right tolerancing on the component. The engineers also run stack-ups before finalising on the right tolerances to the component.

Engineering Outsourcing - No longer just creating 3D models or making drawings

Value Analysis and Value Engineering - Can the cost of this product be reduced? The need of Value Analysis and Value Engineering (VA/VE) competency was recognised among TCS engineers during 2003-2004 when they started thinking on lines such as Can we bring down the overall cost of the product, Can this component be manufactured differently?, Can this feature be simplified further?, Can this component be changed to make it easier to manufacture, Is this close tolerance really required?. Realising the upcoming need, TCS quickly launched the VA/VE training program during 2005 working closely with the Indian Value Engineering Society (INVEST). Over 150 engineers have undergone training as part of this initiative. Over 100 engineers have been certified as value engineering professionals by the Society of American Value Engineers (SAVE). TCS engineers participate actively in value engineering workshops and seminars and share/learn the best practices and continuously hone their VA/VE skills. With the trained engineers at hand, TCS started executing the VA/VE projects to customers and reduced the cost of the product ranging from 10 percent to 30 percent. Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) (Design FMEA and Process FMEA) - How good is the design? FMEA has become an integral part of any design project and so is the need for any service provider to have necessary skills and experience to carry out the same. FMEA report is often used as necessary evidence for applying for product certification and compliance. TCS designed templates for FMEA study and has started making several Design FMEA (DFMEA) and Process FMEA (PFMEA) to validate the design. TCS has internal programs to train their engineers on FMEA tools and its best practices. Computer Based Training (CBT) has been launched to assist in competency development. As domain experience and past data is very critical in FMEA, engineers at TCS collaboratively work with customers on various parameters related to FMEA. New Product Development (NPD) Process - Whats your NPD process? Most companies practice the stage gate process in their product development programs. Often customers ask at TCS, We have our process for NPD, do you have your process? The answer is Yes. TCS developed an in-house NPD process and started implementing it. However, some customers insist that it is convenient to use their process. Nonetheless, as a service provider, when TCS offers range of services in NPD, it is necessary to have the one documented. In 2005, TCS pooled group of engineers working in multiple projects and crafted the in-house NPD process. The best part of this exercise is that TCS stage gate process is the derivative of its association with various customers who practice NPD. So, TCS process has the best of each processes used by different customers. Subsequently, a formal training was imparted during 2006-2007 to associates working in design projects. In 2008, acceleration to this initiative was launched by crafting a fast track in-house program where a group of engineers under intensive training on NPD process and then executed a new to the world type NPD project. TCS also recommends its engineers for the NPDP training conducted by the Product Development Management Association (PDMA). DFX Design for Manufacturability (DFM), Design for Assembly (DFA), Design for Serviceability (DFS) - Can the design be easily manufactured, easily serviced, easily assembled... TCS not only developed home grown tools but has developed competency in using some of the commercially available software such as Boothroyd and Dewhurst. TCS also developed a DFX template which helps in collaborating and communicating between different teams associated with the DFX project. In a typical DFX project, customers handover the design to TCS to perform an investigation from a DFX perspective and TCS comes up with recommendation for improvements. TCS engineers compute DFX index to indicate the quality of the product and will come up with suggestions. The team also carries out all the downstream activities of detailed design or implementing the recommendations.

Engineering Outsourcing - No longer just creating 3D models or making drawings

Examples
Following are a few examples of product design projects that TCS has executed as a result of development of new competencies, which are far different from a traditional modelling and detailing projects: a) DFX study to reduce cost of the check sorter (20% cost reduction) The product is used for sorting cheques as per the bank code or MICR code. The product involved various mechanisms, pulleys, harness, rollers, readers, shafts and plastic parts. The customer was in the process of redesigning one of the existing product lines. When the design was evolving, it was given to TCS to investigate the design from a DFX perspective and come up with recommendations. In the approach, TCS identified the critical components, investigated on design improvement opportunities such as component simplification, communising the parts and so on. There were several plastic parts and validation was done using Moldflow Simulation software. TCS also implemented recommendations by performing a detailed design. The whole exercise could reduce the product cost by 20%. Value engineering of a rack assembly in municipal waste water disinfection equipment (50% product cost reduction) The product is UV based disinfection equipment which involves a set of UV lamps mounted on a frame, powered and controlled by power distribution, electronic control and hydraulic modules. The program was to develop a new version with low overall product cost. TCS engineers worked on different components of this product in coming up with low cost design. Redesign activity involved finalising product specifications, looking for opportunities for cost reduction by easier and simpler manufacturing, easier assembly and servicing, de-featuring, alternate design, reducing the part count and so on. For some of the components, TCS could reduce the cost by 50%. DFMEA on electronic control unit housing for Anti-lock Brake System (ABS) (Reducing the product cost) The product is an electronic control unit to control ABS of a vehicle. This unit has electro mechanical housing, controller and connector. The project involved concept to prototype to pilot supply of ECU housing. During the design stage, a detailed FMEA was done. TCS proposed an innovative solution to ease the manufacturing and to reduce cost. The entire project was executed within 17 weeks including the shipping of physical pilot batch of components of new design. Stack-up Analysis of a Biometric Reader (Solving the component rejection) Biometeric reader is used as a hand recognition system for access control. The reader has electro mechanical enclosure, optical components such as camera, lens, mirror, reflector and infrared window mechanical components such as chassis, latch, display panel and mounting bracket. The product displayed an optical recognition error due to mechanical drift of chassis. TCS investigated and identified the critical dimension contributing to mechanical drift. Stack-up analysis was done to arrive at the right tolerance to critical parts. The tolerance analysis was done for the entire optical path by developing optical path generation tool. TCS also designed a fixture to inspect the chassis with respect to critical dimensions so that only right quality chassis are taken up to production bench.

b)

c)

d)

Engineering Outsourcing - No longer just creating 3D models or making drawings

Change in the Eco System

TCS also focused on developing the right eco system to energise and stimulate the team to do more design projects. Designers Conference EIS organised an internal Product Design Conference, named EDC 2008. The conference was inaugurated by one of the renowned professors from IISc (Indian Institute of Science), Bangalore. The conference had series of case study presentations from associates working in design projects. The presentation sessions featured a total of 20 case studies from aerospace, automotive, industrial machinery, medical equipment and high-tech engineering projects and were chaired by mentors and senior associates. The conference brought design forum of TCS under one roof to learn and share the best practices and successful project experiences. How do we bring young engineers to speed on engineering projects? Other than lateral recruits, TCS inducts young engineers from college. Before deploying these engineers into projects, they attend finishing school which is specially crafted to suit engineering projects. The trainees are taught on various elements of new product development ranging from voice of the customer, all the way up to prototyping. Domain experts at TCS will conduct sessions on Requirement Analysis, Feasibility Analysis, NPD, Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), GD&T, Drawing Standards, Materials, Heat Treatment, Design of Machine Elements, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE). At the end of the program, the audiences are guided to design a product, independently, applying all elements they learned during the course. The bright candidates from the engineering school when they are topped by TCS finishing school program, they become really good resource for any project.

Summary
It is important that companies providing services in engineering look beyond just modelling and detailing services, as they might find it difficult to compete with rapid change in climate on engineering design outsourcing. Customers are seeking more ownership from service providers in assuming higher coverage in the product development programs. Customers are inclined now to engage with only those who actually understand customer product lines and process. The thorough knowledge and experience in engineering and process competencies help the service providers to deliver the product development programs successfully. TCS is one of the first few companies to sense and adapt to the changing needs of the customer which helped it to reposition itself to offer broader range of services to the customer in the product design and development programs.

About Engineering and Industrial Services (EIS)

Engineering and Industrial Services (EIS) is a strategic business unit of TCS that offers a wide spectrum of engineering services and solutions, covering new product development, product lifecycle management, plant solutions and geospatial technology solutions. These services & solutions cater to different industry verticals such as Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Hi Tech, Telecom, Energy & Utilities, Industrial Machinery, Retail, Life Sciences and Medical Devices.

About Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

Tata Consultancy Services Limited is an IT services, business solutions and outsourcing organization that delivers real results to global businesses, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match. TCS offers a consulting-led, integrated portfolio of IT and IT-enabled services delivered through its unique Global Network Delivery ModelTM, recognized as the benchmark of excellence in software development. A part of the Tata Group, India's largest industrial conglomerate, TCS has over 100,000 of the world's best trained IT consultants in 50 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $5.7 billion for fiscal year ended 31 March 2008 and is listed on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange in India. For more information, visit us at www.tcs.com

corporate.engineering@tcs.com

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