Case Study: Federal-Mogul Corporation

CAD Data Exchange In The Cloud

Reduced complexity and improved system reliability with Trubiquity’s TRUexchange solution

Corporate Profile

Founded in Detroit in 1899, Federal-Mogul Corporation is a leading global supplier of powertrain and safety technologies, serving the world’s foremost original equipment manufacturers of automotive, light commercial, heavy-duty, agricultural, marine, rail, off-road and industrial vehicles, as well as the worldwide aftermarket.

The company is headquartered in Southfield, Michigan, and employs approximately 43,000 people in 34 countries.

The Challenge

Global CAD data exchange consolidation

Federal-Mogul has established a global presence and conducts its operations through various manufacturing, distribution and technical centers that are wholly-owned subsidiaries or partially-owned joint ventures. Each of the four company’s business units is engaged in engineering, research and development efforts, working closely with customers to develop solutions to meet their needs.

Federal-Mogul maintains 18 globally-networked technical centers in North America, Europe and Asia. The company’s research and development locations within the United States and Europe were using several separate systems for CAD data exchange with OEMs and suppliers.

“We were using a data exchange solution on an internally hosted server in the United States and two legacy ENGDAT/OFTP based systems in Europe. These local installations required significant administrative effort and related costs. It was essential for Federal-Mogul to consolidate it’s IT landscape, reduce costs and to enhance system performance with global CAD data exchange”, explained Andreas Roessler, Engineering Competency Center Manager CAD, CAE, EDI, Federal-Mogul Information Systems.

The Solution

TRUexchange – externally hosted global data exchange for PLM related large files across the entire value chain

The ambitious requirement specification issued by Federal-Mogul included the following demands for

• North America: Integration of 4 OEMs, 5 Federal-Mogul locations and 80 Federal-Mogul users
• Europe: Integration of 9 OEMs, 16 suppliers and Tier 1 suppliers with a total of 285 contacts, 9 Federal-Mogul locations and 45 Federal-Mogul users.

Federal-Mogul decided to implement Trubiquity’s managed file transfer solution TRUexchange for the North American data exchange and TRUexchange + OFTP for the European data exchange delivered via a “software as a service” model (SaaS). The TRUexchange solution line enables access anytime and anywhere access to all PLM data exchange related functions. A key benefit is that no local components, in terms of hardware or software, are needed. It also reduces the internal administration effort as Trubiquity’s SaaS offering also includes the management of the external data exchange partners. The on-boarding to the various TRUexchange communities and also the connections to the OFTP partners are managed entirely by Trubiquity.

“We were looking for an integrated solution that could cover the standard communication protocols required by OEMs in North America as well as in Europe. Only Trubiquity could provide such a solution to meet our requirements”, said Andreas Roessler.

“Trubiquity was chosen as a partner also because of our long-term experience with them. Their solutions for managed file transfer plus the capability to implement the required standards within time and budget, convinced us to do this project with Trubiquity.”, added Roessler.

Following the implementation, Trubiquity provided two online training sessions to familiarize the Federal-Mogul users with the user interface.

The Result

Significant reduction of administration effort and improved system performance for secure and efficient global PLM related data exchange

Trubiquity provided Federal-Mogul with a secure, efficient externally hosted and maintained environment for its global data exchange. By moving to the externally hosted solution, Federal-Mogul realized significant benefits:

• Operational achievement
  • Elimination of three internal servers and one ISDN line
  • Significant reduction of administration resource requirements, both for hardware and for application
  • System availability improvements attributable to redundancy of the externally hosted solution
• User experience achievement
  • Common portal and user interface for both the North American and European standard protocol
• Cost achievement
  • Savings in hardware maintenance
  • Savings in software maintenance with regard to the two legacy ENGDAT/OFTP based systems in Europe which required an OFTP basis system and an additional solution for the web interface

“With this project we have been able to reduce complexity in our IT landscape by eliminating three points of administration, while actually improving system reliability. Trubiquity has provided Federal-Mogul with a more efficient and cost-effective way to exchange PLM related data with our customers and suppliers worldwide without the need for up-front infrastructure investment and without having to manage and support various systems”, commented Roessler