Sabelt, a leading global manufacturer of car seats, seat belts and motorsport products for racing activities, uses Bid to Win on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. They became a digital-first company with true agility and were able to halve the time it takes to develop new products.
Developing safer, greener car seats
Many years of research and development go into the seat and harnesses that help to keep racing car drivers safe behind the wheel. When they have an accident, their seat belt and webbings must remain intact and functional to both withstand the impact of the collision and then unfasten without jamming to get the driver out fast. It’s why seven out of ten Formula One teams choose seat belts from Sabelt, a leading global manufacturer of car seats, seat belts and motorsport products.
The Italian brand is synonymous with the highest levels of safety in the world of supercars and motorsport, and works closely with the world’s top car manufacturers, including Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Alpine, Aston Martin, Ferrari, Jaguar, Maserati and McLaren. Since the company was founded in 1972, it has invested heavily in improving the performance and safety of its products, and today, carries out rigorous tests at its advanced internal dynamic test laboratory.
Through its Carbogreen project, which started in 2019, Sabelt also is on a mission to evolve into a low environmental impact manufacturer. It plans to launch a new line of seats within the next two to eight years to suit the specific characteristics of battery-powered cars and support the shift towards ecofriendly mobility solutions. The company is researching the processes and materials to combine efficiency and lightness for a “green” reinforced seat structure using new generation chemical and recycled plastics, including natural flax and basalt fibers, recycled carbon fibers, thermoplastic resins and recycled polymers. All accumulated knowledge is managed on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, which Sabelt implemented as part of its long-term digital strategy.
“As we explore the different materials that have enough structural performance in order for us to use less carbon fiber, we can check and manage all of this in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform,” said Roberto Marengo, chief technology officer at Sabelt. “We have all the information related to the materials we currently use, such as glass fiber and carbon fiber within our database on the platform. We’re integrating all the findings and material characteristics from our Carbogreen project, too. When we plan to go to market with our environmentally friendly product line, all the material, selection criteria and characterizations will already be there in the platform.”
Driven by innovation
As Sabelt continues its transition from a high-tech company with an artisan approach to a high-tech company with an industrial structure, it knows it must invest in the latest technologies to not only run its operations more efficiently, but support its customers more effectively, too. Every decision is driven by the company’s unyielding drive to innovate.
“Innovation starts with us,” Marengo said. “We chose the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to eliminate paper-based processes across our business and gain a 360-degree view of all the information we need to innovate. It supports us to take the documentation requests from our customers, ensure product quality, manage changes, approve modifications and release CAD data in the proper way, all managed entirely on the platform.”
Combining speed and customization
Sabelt designs and makes every seat and seatbelt in collaboration with its clients, the car manufacturers, according to their specific needs. For any given client, Sabelt could be managing and developing hundreds of different parts for a multitude of car models. While the company already handled all its design and modelling processes in CATIA, it needed the data and project management capabilities in ENOVIA on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to handle this complexity, streamline product development and keep tight project schedules on track.
“We manage a lot of different product with different personalization,” Marengo said. “Everything is customized and the biggest challenge we have is to respect the timing and launch everything on time. We decided to introduce ENOVIA, because with the short timeframes we are working within, we cannot make mistakes. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform brought us order and helped to avoid any confusion in the product development process.”
Sabelt mapped its entire internal product development methodology, the Sabelt Development System, to ENOVIA.
“The Sabelt Development System methodology provides a whole series of phases and approvals to allow the progress of each project, up to production,” Marengo said. “By managing all of this through ENOVIA, we improved the structure and order of our activities. For each project, the system guides us through a stage-gate model, supports us to manage the approval processes, keeping track of all information and decisions made at each step.”
One of the biggest advantages of this approach is that Sabelt can now work even closer with the customer to satisfy all their requirements and check manufacturing feasibility fast.
“We enter all customer requirements for each product into the platform and if they want to make a change, we can quickly demonstrate whether something is possible or not,” Marengo said. “Or if they give us another document, we can easily substitute it in the platform and make sure we’re working with the latest information.”
As Sabelt improves the customer experience, its efforts also translate into substantial time savings in the product development process.
“With the platform, we have seen a 25 to 30% reduction in the time it takes to produce a product, from the first specification we receive all the way through to production,” Marengo said. “We’ve also seen a significant improvement in terms of reducing mistakes. Now, we know we’re working with the most up-to-date version of the CAD data, so when we go to make a physical model, we can be sure it’s the right version. This equates to time and cost savings.”
To learn more about how Sabelt is using ENOVIA for traceability, compliance and real-time project updates, read the full case study.
Customer_Stories Digital_Transformation EuroMed
