Automotive Engineering Solutions
Managing Complexity in Automotive Engineering
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Paving the way for smart cars and electric vehicles

Zuken helps its customers prepare for the smart cars, autonomous and electric vehicles, and special vehicles of the future. More than 40% of the global automotive sector use Zuken tools/automotive engineering solutions for their electrical schematics.

Through decades of close partnership with our automotive customers, we have the experience to understand individual requirements and the expertise and technology to implement a tailored solution.

LEADING AUTOMOTIVE CUSTOMERS

With as many as 70 electronic control units (ECUs) and 2,000 cables connecting in-vehicle modules, automobiles are among the most advanced and complex electronics products on the market. Manufacturers and suppliers are challenged to manage more requirements, configurations and change processes than ever, all in an increasingly sophisticated engineering design environment.

Our Automotive Engineering Solutions

ECU-Design for advanced applications

Our electronic design and engineering tools are used by numerous automotive manufacturers and Tier-1 suppliers to develop and drive engine and chassis management systems. Our advanced 3D multi-board and IC packaging solution CR-8000 covers the entire electronic system engineering lifecycle: from architectural planning, engineering and system-level optimization to physical implementation and manufacturing.

Cabling and Wire Harness Design

The Zuken product portfolio covers the entire electrical and electronic system. PCB design data generated in our advanced 3D multiboard and IC packaging environment CR-8000 can be imported directly into E3.series, where a function blocks are generated, interface connectors are placed and the signal definition and additional attributes are imported. Using this functionality the data flow between PCB design and system design can be done with just a few clicks.

Wire Harness Design Collaboration

With industry standard formats such as KBL and VEC based tools, Zuken enables barrier-free 3D collaboration between automotive manufacturers and wiring harness suppliers. The open and interoperable products E3.HarnessAnalyzer and E3.WiringSystemLab support the import of the industry-standard formats KBL, VEC and PLMXML, visualization in 2D and 3D and the automatic creation of schematic drawings. With easy-to-use tools, the wiring harness topology can be optimized in terms of cost and weight.

Our satisfied customers

Having decided to deploy a new EDS design environment, and after determining our database structure and setup, it didn’t take long for E3.series to start helping us reduce engineering time, so we can more easily meet our custom vehicle manufacturing deadlines. We are now in a position to serve our customers more effectively by meeting a business objective to turn around option change requests much faster

Chris DarringtonElectrical Design Engineer, Dennis Eagle

Different customers provide different levels and types of information at the beginning of a project. Some know the components they are using, others don’t. While another company may know the layout of the car, another might not. The way E3.series is structured with its database means that I can start the project either at the schematic phase or at the formboard

Mike TicknerDirector, HCI Systems

We work on incredibly complex designs for customers in Formula 1, and E3.series gives us the confidence that we can meet the professional requirements and future challenges of this industry. E3.series also gives us the design turnaround speeds, quality and ECAD/MCAD integration we need to expand our business into the mainstream automotive, off-road vehicles and rail sectors

John TrumanDirector, Racetech Harnessing Ltd.

Since we started using E3.series almost two years ago we have reduced our design cycle by almost 40%, compared with our previous practice of wire harness design using non-automated tools.

M. AmardeepkumarR&D Manager, TVS Motors

We looked for a tool to give an end-to-end design path from schematic capture to physical design. One of the reasons E3.series stood out is its inbuilt electrical intelligence. This will help us reduce rework and add digital prototyping into our engineering design process to satisfy challenging time-to-market and quality demands.

Luigi BaracchinoElectrical Engineering Manager, Piaggio

Zuken is among the top performers within the 80 companies we have audited so far; it is uncommon for a software supplier such as Zuken to achieve Automotive SPICE certification to this level. This result shows Zuken to be a robust and reliable partner for the automotive industry supply chain

Achim HoenowHead of Software Supplier Quality Management at Continental Automotive

With motorsport one of the key things is flexibility and being able to do things quickly, which is why we chose E3.series.

Mark AitkenDesign Engineer at M-Sport

Our objective three years ago was to reduce the electrical architecture design cycle for a new car by 20% requiring no extra resources, just improved process and product development integration. E3.Wiring Diagram Generator is proving to be instrumental in making this possible.

Mr PuiattiManager, Engineering and Design at Fiat Group Automobiles

We can help you with

Managing change in a controlled process

For automotive electronic/electrical systems, change triggers numerous quality and time issues. As the car’s central nervous system, the wiring system is the component subjected to the most design changes.

With our industry leading native electrical and electronic data management solutions, we provide visibility and up-to date engineering information to enable fully documented and detailed change and configuration processes

Modular wire harnesses

Typical time savings of 50% and beyond can be achieved by taking the digital electrical design flow beyond basic schematic and cable design into more complex option and variant management. Cost savings naturally follow, due to productivity benefits.

With E3.HarnessAnalyzer we provide a solution to manage modular wire harness configurations for customer-specific harnesses (KSK) to enable sharing of the comprehensive harness design model and documents with internal or external project teams.

Managing wire harness complexity

Tight control of electromechanical data is one way all stakeholders in the value chain can control product complexity and contain costs. Manufacturers frequently offer 100+ configuration options for the electrical equipment of a vehicle. Electrical systems are therefore often developed in a modular approach. These options & variants may be untested in a particular configuration, making up-front analysis and design-checking imperative.

With E3.HarnessAnalyzer we provide a solution to manage modular wire harness configurations for customer-specific harnesses (KSK) to enable sharing of the comprehensive harness design model and documents with internal or external project teams.

Engineering and manufacturing collaboration

With E3.HarnessAnalyzer Zuken enables 3D, barrier-free collaboration between automotive OEMs and harness suppliers. E3.HarnessAnalyzer 2018 supports the import of industry harness data standard formats KBL, VEC and PLMXML, visualizes them in 2D and 3D, and automatically compiles schematic drawings

More on automotive solutions

Check our latest webinars, white papers, blog posts and more

View all resources
  • Blog
November 26, 2020
How to create customised circuit diagrams

In the light of recent digitisation initiatives, circuit documentation has also come up for discussion. Specifically, the question arose as to whether or not a separation between circuit definition and visualization would make sense. In other words: wouldn't it be a great idea to store electrical data as a digital model, and to display it in a way that is suitable for each target group?

Read now
  • Blog
October 22, 2020
Feumotech delivers custom made fire trucks ahead of schedule

Feumotech’s fire trucks are custom made and highly specialized. This usually equals immense development efforts. By using Zuken’s E3.series electrical engineering software, the Swiss manufacturer was able to significantly reduce the development effort per vehicle. At the same time, they were able to increase the quality of their electrical design documentation.

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  • Webinar
September 23, 2020
MBSE for Wire Harness Design

This webinar will discuss the challenges and best practices of creating a MBSE model for the purpose of wire harness and Electronic Control Units (ECU’s) implementation.

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  • Blog
January 16, 2020
Simplify MCAD Integration with E3.3DTransformer

The mechanical model often drives the electrical design for placement and wire routing. There are multiple M-CAD tools used to author the 3D designs like Dassault Systemes CATIA/SolidWorks, Siemens NX, Creo, Inventor, etc. An important part of a successful electrical design process is the collaboration between electrical and mechanical design principles. Zuken’s E3.series tools have enabled this collaboration with much success.

Read now
  • Press Release
March 28, 2019
3D Harness Design Optimization
Press Release, E3.WiringSystem Lab
  • Blog
July 26, 2018
Under the Hood of an Italian Student Motorsport Team using E3.series

One of the many memorable speakers at this year’s Zuken Innovation World Italy was from the Firenze Race Team. We caught up with Team Leader Caterina Lotti to ask her about her team’s ambitious plans to make an autonomous racing car using E3.series.

Read now
Established in 2000, Firenze Race Team is the official Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) team of Università degli Studi di Firenze (U...

Related products and solutions

  • Products
January 09, 2019
E3.WiringSystem Lab

E3.WiringSystemLab enables the optimization of wire harnesses with an unprecedented degree of speed and accuracy. With these capabilities, it generates substantial benefits across a wide spectrum of applications in the automotive and transportation industry.

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Wire harness analysis and optimization
  • Products
December 12, 2018
E3.HarnessAnalyzer

Sharing comprehensive harness design models and documents with internal or external project teams.

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Smart collaboration for the automotive supply chain
  • Solutions
October 19, 2018
System level design
Looking beyond components and designs
  • Products
October 24, 2018
E3.series

E3.series is a true concurrent electrical engineering environment supporting advanced requirements for electrical documentation, cabinet and wire harness design and manufacturing outputs.

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Design software for electrical and fluid engineering
  • Products
September 26, 2018
CR-8000

CR-8000 is a System-Level PCB & IC Package Design software including 3D Multi-board, Analysis and MCAD Integration

Read now
Advanced multi-board PCB design software

Tell us more about your challenge

While we are trying to provide a comprehensive overview of our solutions portfolio, we are aware we cannot capture all process challenges of a modern business. Drop us a line and describe your challenge.
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