Virtually developed

Transparency, planning certainty, cost savings – these are just some of the many advantages of a virtual vehicle fleet. Assisted by this method, PSW has digitally visualised various equipment variants of the Audi e-tron GT, making development processes more efficient and sustainable. PSW was the first development service provider to adopt the virtual vehicle fleet system and in so doing has performed truly pioneering work. Terence Lim, Stephan Seitz and Christian Barth explain how much this methodology has simplified and accelerated the development processes.

In 2017, Terence Lim took over the overall project coordination as project manager for the virtual vehicle fleet as well as for calculation and simulation activities. Originally from Malaysia, Terence relocated to Germany in 2008 having previously studied mechanical engineering in the UK. He has been employed by PSW since 2015. He was impressed by the innovative approach right from the start of the Audi e-tron GT project:

The basis for the digital representation of the entire vehicle was the parts lists in which each individual part of the Audi e-tron GT was listed and described. Stephan Seitz from Ingolstadt is the subproject manager responsible for the parts lists. The trained car mechanic and mechanical engineer has been working at PSW since 2007.

He has focused on the topic of data completeness right from the start in the DMU department. At the beginning, however, there was no method to track this data. It was only with the introduction of the virtual fleet that the team was able to show where there were gaps in various vehicle configurations.

Processing the concept data so early and creating transparency has an enormous advantage. If the data arrives late, the team may have already initiated tool-making activities. If you only then realise that there is a conflict with a component or a functional deficit, this can then be expensive. At the beginning, all departments were asked what configurations they required and the total came to some 200. These were collected and reduced down to 18 different main configurations.

Getting everything together was a real challenge for Stephan Seitz as there were only a maximum of 18 different main vehicles. These were used for technical development and for the work of every department, which ended up being a great success. Christian Barth also highlights the benefits. The master mechanic, who has been at PSW since 2012, was responsible for the construction data management module for the Audi e-tron GT project.

The colleagues at the Audi Pre-Series Centre (VSC) who build the prototypes did not have to build several hundred vehicles that were configured differently, only 18. This speeds up the process steps and results in a sustainable reduction in material and resources. “We dealt with all of this with our data management. We were able to use the expertise of the whole team and provide all on-time, clean data”, explains Christian Barth.

For Christian, the advantages of the virtual fleet are very clear. The transparency of the complex set-up work for all departments enables absolute planning certainty as well as an increased function safeguarding factor thanks to the calculations. This means there are no surprises, deadlines can be met, approvals are faster and the virtual fleet leads to more automated processes.