One of India’s most established brands in automotive parts solutions, Pavna group has been in the business since 1971, almost half a century, as a reliable provider of high-quality reliable parts such as ignition switches, fuel tank caps, latches, auto locks, handles, switches, oil pump, carburettor, throttle body, fuel cocks, injection system, casting components and other automotive parts solutions for automobile applications.
With a steady growth graph, the one constant for the brand is its adherence to high quality production processes that deliver best in class products to the automotive industry. This is the objective and the corporate mission of the group- consisting of more than fifteen hundred employees, working in four state of the art IATF and OHSAS certified manufacturing plants. That is also what keeps their 32+ OEM customers in India and abroad satisfied, and more than 12% new product launching per year, with a rapid go- to- market strategy.
With the automotive industry rapidly evolving to meet world energy and technology targets, there are a continuous stream of prototype development processes for the demands for new products in the industry. Every new launch, and that happens a number of times every year- has its quality process charted out. This is driven by in-house machining for prototype samples to ensure that the quality, aesthetics and functionality of the product are in line with the company’s set standards.
Technology Led product development efficiency
With manual prototype development processes, it was becoming a challenge to maintain the quality of product , while adhering to the time to market plans. One of the best examples of this, was the development of one of their leading products- automotive locks. Pavna is a leading manufacturer and supplier of locks to automotive OEMs. The locks they manufacture are customised to OEM designs and requirements. There is a detailed input plan from the OEM, to create the right fit lock- which needs micron level fitment. Building these iterative prototypes by a manual process was getting increasingly tougher. To ensure that the locks are absolutely fitted, with absolutely no variance in design, sometimes several prototypes were needed to be created and validated, before the final product could be ready for manufacturing. Even minute differences in size would lead to a complete remodel of the design, several times. Several manual iterations to design would impact deadlines and production plans all around- in terms of time and cost estimates as well as time to market deadlines. With an eye on business expansion, outsourcing these prototypes would make it difficult to control the time to market and cost. They needed a solution that would enable much faster ideation, and delivery of prototypes as per the client requirements- inhouse.
Pavna group considered several options, and finally decided on a technology that could deliver a response as rapid as their market plans- align with the teams to deliver rapid go-to-market, and at the same time, successfully meet the quality and aesthetics criteria of the plan.
With these business objectives in mind, they identified 3D printing technology as their solution to acquire the ability to deliver accurate, aesthetic prototype designs, – specially a user-friendly tool that could accurately print the cylinder part of the lock- with feedback iterations- and in adherence with the go-to- market timelines.
After studying several brand that provided 3D printers, Pavna group leadership identified Stratasys printers as the most suitable for their purpose. It was purchased from Pune based authorized distributor DesignTech. The advantage that Stratasys brought, was its strong experience in additive technologies, and strong and prompt customer support.
High Value Adds from 3D Printing technology
With the new Stratasys 3D printer at their disposal, the Pavna group is now able to streamline the entire automotive locks design and production process. The 3D printer has allowed Pavna group to deliver a much shorter product development cycle, ad a much more accurate product design despite continuous design iterations, to OEMs. Any feedback and rectification can now be incorporated speedily in the design, and the next version is delivered in the shortest possible time.
Pavna group has been very satisfied with the value that Stratasys 3D printing solutions have added to their prototype development process. These printers have delivered big business advantages, ad on the next level, the ease of usage, smooth surfaces, ability to deliver fine details and accuracy in lock designs, were the bigger benefits.
Says Arun Khanna, DGM, Design, the 3D printer has proved to be game changer in the new product design and development. “The Stratasys 3D printer is very user friendly, non-messy and has helped us reduce cost of error, identify design flaws at an early stage specially the cylinder part of the lock which almost all printers failed to print. We can now easily carry out functional, fitment, and aesthetic testing for new products.”
Today, the Pavna group uses 3D-printed prototypes for design validation and functional testing. They have acquired the ability to be ‘ first time right’, with much more accurate design printing, thus ensuring tremendous cost and time savings for the group. This time saved is being utilised to create better products to support their clients.
Stratasys has been successful in providing trouble free usage, and can confidently offer better and more customised products as per the customers’ requirement, with a much shorter development cycle.
DesignTech Systems Support
Pavna group is very satisfied with the support from DesignTech—started printing the required locking components to the OEM’s. DesignTech team helped to identify the right Printer with their strong experience in additive technologies
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CASE STUDY BY DesignTech Systems