Cadalyst - September 2008 - (Page 38)

plmstrategies By Kenneth Wong More Bang for Your Truck Manufacturer of vehicle performance adjusters gets a boost from Omnify’s Empower PLM system. G errit Kruitbosch, vice-president of engineering at Edge Products, drives a 2008 Chevy Silverado 2500HD, a 6.6-liter LLM diesel truck. Like his customers, he wants to squeeze as much horsepower out of the vehicle as possible, even beyond Chevy’s factory settings. So he equips his Silverado with one of his company’s two best-selling performance adjusters: Evolution and Juice with Attitude (ﬁgure 1). Juice with Attitude, according to Edge, “modifies fueling and timing parameters to increase power. . . . Once [engine temperature] reaches 130º, the module begins modifying timing and delivering fuel at 50% of the calculated additional fuel, and the percentage increases as the engine temperature increases, until at full engine temperature the Juice delivers 100% of the calculated additional fuel.” Evolution is an external programmer that modifies the same parameters as Juice within a vehicle’s stock engine unit. It can “remove/adjust your vehicle’s factory rev and speed limiter.” The Silverado’s default setup yields 595 foot-pounds of torque at 305 horsepower (HP), according to Edge. With Evolution and Juice with Attitude, Kruitbosch can push the truck to deliver as much as an additional 250 foot-pounds of torque and 130 HP. But aftermarket products usually are not blessed by car manufacturers. Consequently, every time Kruitbosch brings his Silverado to a Chevy-authorized service center for checkup or maintenance, Edge’s softwarecontrolled configurations are overwritten by the manufacturer’s updates, and his truck loses its performance edge. Juice with Attitude, Evolution, and other Edge gadgets — the A2, EZ, Insight, Mileage Max, and Trail Jammer — are configured for popular Chevy, Dodge, Ford, Jeep, and recreational vehicle models. Without official support from the vehicle makers, Edge relies on its own resources to monitor the manufacturers’ software updates and issue its own to keep its aftermarket devices operational. So managing a database with nearly 100 top-level stock-keeping units and more than 2,000 parts and all their configurations becomes a critical part of its business. Edge uses Omnify Empower, a product lifecycle management (PLM) suite, to keep its product lines in order. Figure 1. Edge Products’ aftermarket devices — such as Juice with Attitude (top) and Evolution — are configured to yield more performance than vehicle makers’ factory setups. The company uses Omnify’s PLM system to keep track of the parts and attributes for each product line. Discovering Omnify Before installing Omnify, Edge had what Kruitbosch remembered as “a very cavalier” change order–management process. “We had a paper-based process,” he said. “We weren’t very careful with the hierarchy of our bills of materials (BOMs). When we had an engineering change order, we 38 didn’t specify the changes in all levels of the products. We didn’t really have a part database either, so when one engineering team was coming up with a new design, it wasn’t reusing compatible parts we were already using, which would make our contract manufacturer’s job easier.” In the hunt for a new system, Kruitbosch and his colleagues took a serious look at roughly 10 products. Omnify and others Edge Products demonstrated their prodwww.edgeproducts.com ucts over the Internet Omnify using WebEx and other www.omnifysoft.com remote networking tools. www.cadalyst.com cadalyst September 2008 http://www.edgeproducts.com http://www.omnifysoft.com http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - September 2008

Cadalyst - September 2008 Contents Editor's Window Cad Central Tech Trends: Genie Out of the Bottle Cadalyst Labs Reviews: Big Tools for Big Jobs — Wide-Format Scanners and Printers Make Small Work of Large Projects Cadalyst Labs Reviews: AutoCAD 2009 — General-Purpose CAD Software Cadalyst Labs Reviews: AecBatchStylesEditor 2009 — CAD Standards Management Software for AEC Cad manager: Synchronize CAD Files over a Wide Area MCAD Modeling: Is 2D Drawing Doomed? Plm Strategies: More Bang for Your Truck Aec Insight: Works and Plays Well with Others Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes Hot Tip Harry: VBA Hints for Customizing AutoCAD

Cadalyst - September 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.