The product improvement life cycle goes by a sea of change. Gone are the times when OEMs would be capable of launch simply a few merchandise in a yr and nonetheless attain development. India is now the world’s fourth-largest automotive market and the purchasers at this time need the most effective of all worlds however at aggressive costs.
Speaking to Express Mobility, Vishwanath Rao, MD, Altair India agrees that point to marketplace for merchandise is shrinking. “Today most OEM’s are talking about 18-to-24-month development cycle from the time they conceive the product to the time they launch the product in the market. In the past that used to be 8-10 years, you know, as probably about 15-16 years back it came down to about 6-7 years, 5 years, 3 years, and today we’re talking about 18 months.”
One of the important thing enablers for such product improvement is a simulation, an space the place Altair dwells in. The firm was based in 1985 and principally focusses on three major areas – physics-based simulation, synthetic intelligence (AI), and high-performance computing. The imaginative and prescient is to assist prospects leverage the convergence of all three applied sciences in making accelerated enterprise-level selections.
Rao says that the corporate is concerned in lots of tasks with a few of the largest OEMs around the globe that come to Altair to resolve a few of their greatest engineering challenges at this time.
“We are helping the automotive industry shrink their product development time cycle, reduce time to market and at the same time help accomplish a reduction in the cost by virtue of reducing consumption of material, making their designs much lighter, and improve the quality of the products by making them safer. The overall experience of the cabin for a car right from an occupant sitting inside the car to the driving experience that he/she gets in terms of the overall comfort and quality feeling; we enhance that by using our simulation tools,” he says.
He states that simulation is the most important driver by way of lowering the lead time.
Simulation to chop weight and cut back improvement time
It isn’t any secret that OEMs try to scale back weight and improvement time. The discount in weight allows the car to offer increased effectivity particularly enabling the car consumer to squeeze extra mileage out of their car.
Rao says the simulation applied sciences have developed to an extent the place the accuracy of the outcomes is inside plus or minus 5-10 per cent as in comparison with a take a look at situation. Most of Altair’s simulation outcomes are stated to be inside plus or minus 5 per cent, which allows prospects to make the best selections simply by trying on the knowledge.
One of the important thing adopters or beneficiaries of simulation in India have been new-age start-ups particularly within the electrical two- and three-wheeler area.
“Some of them (electric two-wheeler start-ups) have been extremely particular about how they engineer their products. They go deep and use simulation extensively to resolve all the problems before they have launched the products. There are some EV manufacturers in India, especially startups, who are importing designs from other countries and just trying to launch it in India, which is obviously resulting in some sort of issues because those products are not localised for Indian conditions. The local road conditions in India is very different to what it is in some other country. The climatic conditions are very harsh especially during summers, because of the kind of heat that we experience here. Whereas some of these products that are being imported from other countries and launched here are mostly engineered for their local conditions,” expresses Rao.
He believes that plenty of localisation has to occur right here, and “simulation is the biggest weapon that is available with all these companies today. Most of these startups want to launch product in 6-9 months only, nothing more than that.”
In a what might be seen as David versus Goliath situation, start-ups are banking on superior simulations to skip the entire conventional improvement cycle that legacy gamers used to observe. Rao sees that simulation instruments have helped start-ups to launch their merchandise with “minimal capital investment, which was not possible earlier.”
Domain information coupled with simulation instruments go hand-in-hand
According to the Altair India head, the understanding of the car area is one thing that can not be side-lined. The significance of understanding the automotive area is essential to creating the best product as a result of the OEMs actually must understand how their merchandise are going for use, what sort of market are they attempting to serve? Where will the product promote? Is it B2B or B2C?
Simulation alone can’t be a magic wand. The area information is equally vital.
“Somebody who just knows a simulation software tool cannot sit and engineer a two-wheeler or a car; deep understanding of the automobile domain is very important. What simulation helps you do is of course it helps you explore various scenarios which would not have been possible in the past. Even if somebody does not have really, really deep understanding of the automotive domain, he can model some of those problems and replicate some of those field issues in simulation and ensure that they are going to market with the product which is of high quality,” provides Rao.
When queried concerning the firm’s India operations and efficiency, he stated, “We are 25 years old in India. We have roughly about 650 employees in India, out of which about 450 or software developers who are primarily working on developing all these technologies. The simulation tools, AI tools, high-performance computing tools, a lot of those development happens out of our office in India, and the rest of the 200 people are the ones who are in business areas like sales, application, engineering, customer support, back end, IP support, finance, HR, legal and many other operational areas. In terms of our customer mix, I would say there is no company in India today who’s an automobile manufacturer in some or other way who does not use Altair technology. Anybody who works in the automobile industry today, is a customer for Altair; whether it is an OEM or whether It is a large Tier 1 manufacturer or local component manufacturer or a tyre maker. Pretty much every company today in the country uses our tools to build automotive and related products.”
“I have lost count, we probably have 30 or 35 EV startups today or even more probably 50 plus EV startups today who have used Altair technology or using Altair technology to build some of their products,” concludes an optimistic Rao.
INTERVIEW: Vishwanath Rao, MD, Altair India
Will Altair proceed to have a look at new acquisitions and can you be open to JVs in India?
We have been continually buying firms. In truth, just lately, we acquired an organization known as Concept Engineering, which is primarily within the space of semiconductor design and validation. And earlier than that, we acquired one other firm known as Powersim, which works within the space of simulating energy digital methods.
We are continually on the acquisition spree and most of those are know-how acquisitions that get built-in into our bigger know-how providing. These are items of know-how which might be very crucial at this time by way of what the trade needs, so we purchase these applied sciences and combine them into Altair’s distinctive framework, which is the bigger framework for simulation and product improvement. In phrases of JVs. No, we wouldn’t have any plans of launching any JVs in India as such, at this cut-off date. It’s extra of know-how acquisition and integration of know-how into our bigger framework that we’re taking a look at.
What are the challenges that you simply foresee for the Indian automotive sector?
The automotive sector during the last decade has developed extraordinarily quickly by way of being aggressive. Today when you see the variety of launches. You launch a product at this time when you don’t promote this available in the market very properly. If you don’t get better your ROI (Return on Investment) throughout the subsequent, say 18 months, there’s a brand new product on the market to displace you, it has change into like a cell phone market.
When a product is launched available in the market the window of alternative is simply 12-18 months. If you don’t money in within the 12 to 18 months, any individual else is ready to displace you. This means you’ll have to be extraordinarily quick and very agile, by way of the way you launch merchandise. You can not have 3-4-year cycle occasions for product improvement. They must shrink significantly.
The product must be futuristic and really aspirational in nature. Otherwise, the buyer doesn’t need to purchase at this time. He doesn’t need to change a automotive as a result of his automotive has change into outdated. He needs to vary a automotive as a result of he needs to go for an aspirational product and persons are promoting vehicles in 3-5 years shifting to a brand new automotive as a result of it’s extra aspirational.
It (car) is just not checked out as an object of utility. It is extra of an object of need proper now, the automotive is for lots of people; and with the pandemic, everyone is shifting in the direction of private mobility, in order that has additionally accelerated the necessity for a passenger automotive or scooter or no matter it’s.
What about such fierce competitors within the automotive trade?
For the automotive trade, the most important problem proper now could be how do you deal with competitors?
There’s great quantity of competitors from all corners, whether or not it’s startups or world gamers, native gamers there’s great quantity of competitors. To be aggressive within the market, OEMs must focus on sure key parameters.
One is how shortly you’ll be able to launch merchandise. Second, what’s the high quality of your product. Third, is it the thing of need? any individual needs to purchase a automotive as a result of it’s simply so good to have.
The entire factor about high quality, the entire thing about being an object of need is form of turning into the driving drive at this time, and simulation has many applied sciences which can assist OEMs accomplish a few of these targets.
Source: www.financialexpress.com”