Engineering Services
Success Stories and Case Studies
Environmental Engineering
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) awarded a contract to Continental
to conduct an air quality survey of the Central Indiana Region. This program includes all
transportation equipment, technical personnel and air monitoring equipment required for
the testing of air quality. Testing routes were designed to detect quality levels of air
in urban (Indianapolis) environments as well as in the rural regions surrounding Indianapolis
and continue at the State level. Continental has also expanded their environmental capabilities
through a joint venture with environmental remediation firms to support:
- Emergency Spill Response (for Manufacturing and Process requirements)
- Investigations and Remediation (Buying/Selling/Closure/Risk Assessment)
- Hazardous Materials Management (Front end to back end disposal services)
- Clean Up Services (Follow up on newly discovered or known problems)
- Tank Cleaning and Removal (Confined space entry and vacuum truck services)
Fifty-million dollar saving with Value Engineering
Continental's Engineering Services include Value Engineering. With one client, Continental
was able to re-engineer and redesign numerous components for complex assemblies that involved
plastic injection molded sub-components, steel stampings, rubber products and die castings.
The resulting benefits resulted in over $50 million in piece price cost savings alone,
with additional labor and process savings. The group developed new product designs that:
- Simplified assembly operations, creating significant labor savings.
- Re-designed multiple components into fewer or simplified parts, thereby error-proofing
assembly operations, reducing scrap and improving quality.
- Elimination of processing, welding and adhesive assembly operations with re-engineered
fasteners or snap-fit designs.
- Combined multiple parts into single components, creating significant piece price reductions.
In one case,a multiple component stamping with 54 variations and welding operations was
reduced to a single component with only one design without welding, cutting costs by 700%.
Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) for new product development increases success rate
to 99%
Continental has worked closely with a major U.S. manufacturer to create a Computer-Aided-Engineering
[CAE] group to support new product development initiatives. This technical resource included
a "fully bundled" program approach, which integrated dedicated technical personnel,
program management, off-site facilities, support staff, computer hardware (workstations
& PCs) and other related equipment (printers, plotters, communications, power backups,
data management, etc.) and CAE/FEA software.
Prior to the creation of this Advanced Product Development Technology, designs were
created, prototyped and tested with prototype test failures occurred routinely as normal
events. These test failures were addressed with design modifications that could best be
described as engineering "dead reckoning". New designs were engineered and these
took time to mold and test. Even the new designs would fail on occasions, jeopardizing
product launch timing targets. The design-test-failure-retest cycle was at best unpredictable
and costly. After the creation of this Advanced Product Development Technology, every new
design was run through a series of computer generated test simulations. Design shortcomings
were detected prior to prototyping and testing. New designs were developed quickly and
re-tested in these simulations and only those that passed went on for actual physical prototyping
and testing.
Test results for prototypes rose to over a 99% success rate after Advanced
Product Development Technology was fully implemented by Continental.
From its inception, and continuing to this day, this CAE-based technology has resulted
in millions of dollars of annual savings in prototype parts and tooling costs. It has significantly
reduced product development time, been the subject of numerous technical papers, and has
been protected as key Intellectual Property by many Trade Secret designations.
Optical Software System creates new styling possibilities
Continental provided engineering support to a client for the creation of a fully automated
Optical Software System {ODS} capable of creating a wide range of headlamp optical "prescriptions"
which met all U.S. government headlamp optical requirements.
This software brought optical engineering into the Twentieth Century. It has been awarded
Trade Secret protection as a key proprietary technology for this client. This also helped
enable development of a new lighting technology where the optical pattern was a part of
the reflector [reflector optics] surface instead of on the headlamp lens.
Dynamic new headlamp styling was now possible. The new styling possibilities were presented
to all North American Automobile Manufacturers for review and consideration. The resultant
headlamp designs were new combinations of parabolic, geometric and elliptical surfaces.
Animated driving simulations enable innovative headlamp design
Continental adapted the Alias/MAYA animation software (utilized by Stephen Spielberg
for the dinosaurs in the movie Jurassic Park) to create new simulation technology for forward
lighting. With this software, Continental provided two stunning new technologies. The first
permitted the creation of a photographically precise picture of any lighting product using
only CAD data. In the second application, Continental engineers created a dynamic night
drive road simulation that created a short movie of what a driver would actually see when
driving at night with a specific headlight design. The intent was to show the Design Staffs
at any customer location what different qualities of headlamps would actually look like
at night under real driving conditions. Optical patterns are well understood by optical
engineers, but these patterns mean little to normal drivers [non-technical drivers]. This
software actually "showed" what a driver could see, not see, and how well the
driver would see at night.
A key technical development by Continental was the creation of a special proprietary
optical translator that imported actual headlamp optics data into the movie simulation.
This Photo-Realistic technology was considered valuable enough that in 1999, this client
protected the proprietary technology with a Trade Secret protection. No other company in
the world can provide animated simulations of this type or optical quality.
Technical Staffing:
A Case Study in Patents and Protection of Proprietary Technology
For this client, Continental has provided outsourced R & D services included the
preparation and writing of patents. Continental provided Engineers for technology development
(over 50 Patents) and was also able to provide Technical Writers for the protection of
this technology. These writers were not only involved in technical drafts, patent descriptions
and editing with Patent Attorneys, but were also part of the protection of Intellectual
Property that included Trade Secrets, Copyrights, Intellectual Property Disclosures, Proprietary
Technology and Trade Marks.
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