Mentor Graphics Capital Harness MPM Product Wins SAE Automotive Engineering Technology Award

Addressing manufacturing process management, Capital Harness MPM systematically models harness designs against production capabilities to create structured bill-of-materials data. This data is typically used to drive enterprise resource management (ERP) systems. Capital Harness MPM is part of the Capital tool suite, a powerful electrical system and wire harness design environment for the automotive, aerospace and defense industries.

“Wire harnesses are high-cost components within modern automobiles, so harness manufacturers constantly search for improved efficiency,” said Kevin Jost, Editorial Director for SAE’s Automotive Engineering International magazine. “With Capital Harness MPM, Mentor Graphics delivers powerful new technology that will make a genuine impact to harness manufacturing engineering. It is this combination of technology and utility that resulted in AEI singling out Mentor for this prestigious award.”

Wire harness manufacturing is a logistically challenging, multi-stage process that is difficult to optimize, especially because designs change frequently and configuration complexity is high. By analysing harness designs against factory capabilities, Capital Harness MPM helps identify what, where and how harnesses and their constituent sub-assemblies should be built. Manufacturing costs can be reduced by accurately reflecting optimized manufacturing patterns. In addition, Capital Harness MPM helps minimize inventory and obsolescence costs and achieve economies of scale by identifying sub-assemblies that are common across different harness designs. The automation delivered also helps minimize manufacturing engineering errors and cycle times, and reduces staff training costs.

Technically, Capital Harness MPM employs a reasoning engine specially developed for the wire harness domain. This reasoning engine intelligently decomposes harness designs into hierarchical assembly steps that match production capabilities. Manufacturing intellectual property can be flexibly and securely captured using an extensible rules-based approach so that, for example, custom-built production equipment can be modeled. Design data created in the Mentor® Capital HarnessXC, Capital ModularXC or VeSys® Harness tools can be analysed.

Martin O’Brien, general manager of Mentor’s Integrated Electrical Systems Division, commented, “Capital Harness MPM addresses a subject with high commercial impact, and further extends the digital continuity delivered by the Capital flow and addresses a major pain point for many of our customers. A lot of work has gone into the development of Capital Harness MPM and it’s nice to have the product recognized by SAE International’s AEI, a leading publication in our industry.”

Capital Harness MPM is also attracting significant interest not only from companies that manufacture wire harnesses for automobiles, trucks and off road vehicles, but also from the aerospace industry. Aerospace harnesses tend to be very complex, so automated creation of structured bill-of-materials data is particularly valuable for this community.