CLAAS Tractor in France designs and manufactures tractors for the CLAAS Group, one of the world’s leading agricultural machinery manufacturers. The company, which produces 8,000 tractors per year from its Le Mans factory, needed to effectively handle growing complexity in its machines and optimize its assembly line, which processes a wide range of models simultaneously.
CLAAS Tractor uses the 3DEXPERIENCE platform with Concurrent Equipment Engineering for digital continuity across engineering and manufacturing, Single Source for Speed for multidisciplinary collaboration and Ready to Make to digitally plan and drive production with full traceability as part of its mission to modernize its factory. These solutions allow CLAAS teams to work from a single data source and manage all design and production processes in 3D.
By connecting its design and manufacturing process disciplines, CLAAS Tractor is able to plan ahead and digitally validate tractor 3D designs before they enter production. The team can now simulate new designs and handle design variants with ease, checking manufacturing feasibility early on in the development process to optimize its assembly line.
“We hardly ever produce the same tractor twice in a year,” said Franck Bruneau, industrial process architect at CLAAS Tractor. “At any one time, we can have 20 different models on the same assembly line, and in these models we have more than 300 options, which means we have unique assembly combinations every day. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform was the only way to anticipate the integration of specific options and to plan the process upfront.”
Backed by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, CLAAS Tractor is now able to consider customizations early in the product development process and account for how they will need to be managed on the assembly line. Bruneau and his team are responsible for defining the manufacturing process for each tractor. Since using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and ENOVIA’s collaboration capabilities, Bruneau said they have been able to plan ahead more easily, collaborate effectively with the R&D department and significantly reduce errors.
“The platform allows process engineers to co-design the product with product engineers, anticipate assemblies and improve the process and product quality,” Bruneau said. “The platform makes it possible to share data on a single environment and bring together employees from the design office, methods and factory teams that are not located on the same site. It has enhanced communication and
helped us collaborate on the product-process design.”
To learn more about how CLAAS Tractors is benefiting from digital continuity and improving its design to manufacture process with virtual experience twins, explore the full case study.
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