Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Motorsports Company Engineers a Winning Program
Overview
Country or Region:United States
Industry:Engineering
Customer Profile
The company, founded in 1999 by Ray Evernham, legendary crew chief for NASCAR superstar Jeff Gordon at the height of his success, is one of NASCAR’s first engineering-centric organizations.
Business Situation
To achieve its goal of excellence
through engineering, NASCAR team
Evernham Motorsports needed to
replace a mixture of mismatchedengineering tools.
Solution
Evernham chose CATIA V5 and
SMARTEAM from Dassault Systèmes
on the Microsoft® Windows®
platform, for their engineering power
and data exchange capabilities withDodge, its primary sponsor.
Benefits
Quicker response time
Exploit simulation and analysis to maximize each car’s performance
Cut cycles times by 50 percent / “One of our objectives has been to get the financialand technical sides of the house on common platforms to minimize costs and facilitate data sharing, and using Microsoft Windows for both allows us to do that.”
Dr. Eric Warren, Technical Director, Evernham Motorsports
Evernham Motorsports operates two teams sponsored by Dodge and will add a third Dodge team, sponsored by Valvoline, in the 2006 season. Like Dodge parent DaimlerChrysler, Evernham relies on CATIA V5 from Dassault Systèmes in its engineering program, along with SMARTEAM. Evernham also relies on Microsoft® solutions, including Microsoft Windows®, which allows the engineering and business sides of the company to be in close communication at all times. The company’s servers run Microsoft Windows 2000 Server while its desktops are Microsoft Windows XP Professional. In addition to CATIA V5 and SMARTEAM, which both run on Windows, the company’s core Microsoft applications include Microsoft Office, Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains®(now part of Microsoft Dynamics™) and Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server company-wide, plus Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET, Microsoft NetMeeting® and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 Desktop Engine(MSDE) in engineering.
Situation
In the competitive world of NASCARracing, the difference between firstand last place is fractions of a secondper lap, a gap that Dr. Eric Warren, technical Director of EvernhamMotorsports, knows will only getsmaller.
“As they tighten the rules, it becomesmore important to understand howthe car works from an engineeringperspective,” Warren says. “When thedifference between first and last placeis 2/10ths of a second per lap, trial anderror in the shop or on the track nolonger works.”
Officials at Evernham Motorsportstherefore believe mechanical prowess,the sport’s traditional source ofadvantage, is being surpassed by engineering excellence. The company,founded in 1999 by Ray Evernham,legendary crew chief for NASCARsuperstar Jeff Gordon at the height ofhis success, is one of NASCAR’s firstengineering-centric organizations.
“I actually oversee the constructionof the cars, which is unusual,” saysWarren, an aerospace engineer bytraining. “That’s traditionally the crewchief’s or team director’s responsibility.It reflects that we’re an organizationfounded on engineering.”
Solution
Engineering a winning record
Evernham Motorsports operates twoteams sponsored by Dodge and willadd a third Dodge team, sponsoredby Valvoline, in the 2006 season.Like Dodge parent DaimlerChrysler,Evernham relies on CATIA V5 fromDassault Systèmes in its engineeringprogram, along with SMARTEAM.
Evernham also relies on Microsoft®solutions, including Microsoft Windows®, whichallows the engineering and businesssides of the company to be in closecommunication at all times. “One of ourobjectives has been to get the financialand technical sides of the house oncommon platforms to minimize costsand facilitate data sharing, and using
Microsoft Windows for both allows us todo that,” Warren says.
The company’s servers run Windows
2000 Server, while its desktops areWindows XP Professional. In additionto CATIA V5 and SMARTEAM, whichboth run on Windows, the company’score Microsoft applications include Microsoft Office, Microsoft Business Solutions--Great Plains® andExchange 2000 Server company-wide, plusMicrosoft Visual Studio® .NET, Microsoft NetMeeting, andMicrosoft SQL Server™ 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE) in engineering. Both sides ofthe house use Microsoft SQL Server2000, which has been the corporatestandard for business functions sincethe company was founded. Engineeringdecided to switch to SQL Server in2002 to facilitate data exchange withthe business operation.
Warren and Evernham believe thecompany’s quick rise to the top of the NASCAR leader boards reflectsits engineering focus. In just its fifthseason, for example, Evernham’s No.
19 Dodge Charger team was in the
NASCAR Nextel Cup Chase for the
Championship for the second straight year, finishing the year in 9th place inthe overall championship.
“If you look at the top NASCARorganizations, we’ve reached this pointat a much faster pace than anyone thatcame before us,” Warren says withobvious pride. “We think it shows ourphilosophy is paying off.”
An integrated solution for anintegrated strategy
In NASCAR, the need for speedon the race track is rivaled only bythe need for speed in engineering.Evernham’s teams turn out a newengine design every four months. A body configuration lasts no more thantwo months. Construction of a car,start to finish, can take as little as 18days, including building a chassis fromscratch and custom-forming most of thesheet metal for the body by hand.
But when Warren joined Evernhamin 2002, he inherited a mismatchedset of engineering tools that couldn’tkeep pace. It didn’t take him long toreplace those tools with CATIA V5 andSMARTEAM.
“The only exposure we had to CATIAinitially was on UNIX through oursponsor, Dodge,” Warren says. “As weinvestigated a bit more, we learned thatCATIA V5 was available on MicrosoftWindows, and that was a big sellingpoint for us for a lot of reasons: It’seasier to deal with the machines;people tend to have more experiencewith PCs, which simplifies the training;and the total cost of ownership is muchless. Also, the rate of development of
PC-based systems and the ability tocustomize them were attractions for us.
But lower total cost of ownership wasthe reason we went with the Microsoft-basedsystem.”
Adds Vincent Wong, Evernham’s IT
Director: “If the technical/engineeringoperation were working on UNIX, wewould have to have a much larger ITstaff than we do.”
SMARTEAM, meanwhile, intelligentlystores, maps and tracks all ofEvernham’s CATIA V5 product designsand related engineering data, allowingquick access to specific knowledgefrom the company’s voluminousdatabase. SMARTEAM also providesthe proper structure and context forall data, enhancing Evernham’s abilityto iterate from existing designs andfreeing time for innovation.
Benefits
Engineering for every advantage
Steve Oliver, Deputy Director of Design
Services, is in charge of Evernham’sengine development program. Histeam’s mission is to produce morehorsepower with less weight, an endlesscycle of designing, analyzing andmachining parts dozens of times daily.
“We used to design in one package,analyze in another and machine in athird, and they all had different userinterfaces,” Oliver says. “With CATIAV5, it’s one click to move from design toanalysis and then another click to moveto NC programming. That’s invaluablebecause each one of our engineersperforms all three tasks, and they onlyhave to learn one user interface. A lotof packages are really good at only oneor two. CATIA V5 is great at all three.It has cut at least 50 percent off ourdevelopment times.”
Oliver’s engineers spend their days asking “what if?” in a rapid-fire cyclethat searches for any fractionaladvantage. The faster they canmove between design, analysis, NCprogramming and back again, the bettertheir chances of discovering a majorbreakthrough that will pay off on thetrack. “We’re constantly iterating to getmore power,” Oliver says, “and we pushall the parts to the limit all the time.”
“Pushing all the parts to the limit”explains why the accuracy of FEA(Finite Element Analysis) in CATIA V5is so critical, Oliver says. “Because wedesign, analyze and do the machineprogramming, we’re not analysis gurus. When we first started using FEA inCATIA V5, it was so easy comparedto what we had used before that I wasworried, frankly, about how accurateit would be. But when we put theparts on the track, our models and theFEA correlate exactly with where wesee failures. To get such accuracyfrom a bunch of generalists using atool as easy as this one ... it’s trulyphenomenal.”
When someone on the team discoversa power-boosting design, the ability toimmediately machine that part in-houseis another competitive edge, Oliver says. “If we find a substantial powergain, we make 60-80 sets immediatelyto get it on all the engines, and CATIA V5 speeds that process significantly.”
Precision that pays
Evernham Motorsports pairs theknowledge of its engineers with theprecision simulation capabilitiesof CATIA V5 to identify the minutecombinations of changes that generatevictory on the track.
Armed with a precise digital model of acar, Evernham Motorsports’ engineerscan use structural, aerodynamicand vehicle dynamic analysis andpackaging studies to prove out the best configurations. CATIA V5 datacan even be used in another customsoftware tool that models eachracetrack on the NASCAR circuit,allowing the team to see how a design will perform under specific trackconditions.
Digital simulation is not only moreaccurate – it’s more available. AsNASCAR cuts back on the amountof on-track testing each team canperform, simulation must pick up theslack. But when the team does get achance to test on the track, their digitalmodels and data can go with them.
Evernham’s mobile units, known astransporters because they are usedto transport race cars to the track, are
networked back to the computers atEvernham headquarters. “All of our
CATIA data, plus a lot of other data,is stored in SMARTEAM,” Warrensays. “Using SMARTEAM WebNavigator, we can link from our trucks,transporters and facilities at the trackto our database of information here atthe shop. If we want to pull that data into a specific track simulation, we useSMARTEAM for access.”
Remote access is another reason theteam appreciates the fact that CATIAV5 and SMARTEAM run on MicrosoftWindows. “If we had engineeringworking on a UNIX-based system,”Warren says, “the flexibility to workfrom a laptop, to have mobility to takeCATIA to the track for a test, or to takesomething home to work on—well, that would be much more difficult to do withUNIX than it was on PCs. Windows isjust much easier and provides us withmore seamless integration.”
Every team director and driver receives detailed briefings usingtrack simulations to illustrate how theengineering choices combine to delivertop speed. “We spend a lot of time withthe driver, explaining to him what eachchange will do and why, particularlywhen the change is not intuitivebecause it’s the culmination of threeor four factors,” Warren says. “It helpsthe driver and the team director, whenthey’re in a race and have to make ajudgment call, to make the right one.”
Engineering at the speed ofNASCAR
Each time an engineer makes achange, CATIA V5 automaticallyadjusts all interrelated parts andsystems, saving time and ensuringconsistency. SMARTEAM managesversions and variations, allowingengineers to track what has been triedbefore and quickly revert to a previousdesign if a change doesn’t deliver theanticipated results.
The system also facilitates quickchanges based on knowledge gainedfrom a recent race or in responseto a NASCAR rule change. Warrencites a recent case in which NASCARchanged the limit on camber angleof the wheels, just after Evernhamhad completed its track tests foran upcoming race. With just a fewdays of notice, the team re-designedthe suspension to deliver the sameperformance under the more restrictiverule. “Because we had the CAD modelsstored in SMARTEAM, we could makethe changes immediately and verifythat they would deliver the performancewe wanted,” Warren says.
Forging into the future
Although many NASCAR traditionalistsmay reject Evernham’s engineering focus, Warren believes the company ishelping to forge the sport’s future. “Ourintent is to prove that engineering iscentral to the process, not an add-on orafterthought,” he says.
“Some of the teams that were dominantin the past are now weak becausethey didn’t keep up with the times.NASCAR as a whole is resistingthe technology because their goalis to make everything equal. We’reaiming to be better than equal and thetechnology supports that.”
Evernham Motorsports’ future,
Warren believes, lies in building itstechnological capabilities both broaderand deeper. “We’re confident the morewe learn, the more often we will win.”
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