“The demand for transformers and grid infrastructure solutions has never been greater,” Andreas Barthou continued. “By increasing our testing capacity in Ludvika and fostering closer collaboration between our experts, we are strengthening our ability to help customers around the world build the electricity grid of the future in a key growth market.”
It is worth noting that Hitachi Energy has delivered more than half of the world’s HVDC projects to date, including grid connections for offshore wind power in the North Sea, in the Baltic Sea towards the common European electricity market, and in the ”Caithness-Moray and Shetland project”, with the first live HVDC interconnection with multiple terminals in operation in Europe.
Five folded test capacity
As mentioned in the intro about the investment at the competence center in Ludvika: The now activated bet of just over $70 million will further expand the business with a 20,000 square meter facility. The factory has a long heritage of innovation in the manufacture of HVDC systems and the expansion will accommodate increased test capacity for the MACH control and protection system, but also co-located office space for improved collaboration and a new visitor center to strengthen engagement with customers and partners. MACH stands for “Modular Advanced Control for HVDC” and provides advanced fault registration and remote control functions. The system is designed to run 24/7 for thirty years or more, allowing the HVDC system to be controlled and protected in the most reliable way throughout its lifetime.
The press material notes that the new facility will enable Hitachi Energy to fivefold its test capacity to meet growing demand for advanced energy solutions. Approximately 2,000 additional new jobs have previously been announced in Sweden related to the expansion.
”This expansion strengthens Ludvika’s role as a global competence center for high-voltage direct current,” summarizes Andreas Berthou.
The PTC-based CapDes platform
So, let’s take a closer look at the PLM-related customer-centric solutions around design, configuration and visualization within Hitachi Energy, based on a case story published earlier by PTC.
Initially, the company started using the PTC-based CapDes solution at a single manufacturing site, but after a few years of refinement and improvement, it saw the value in scaling its business transformation globally and expanding the CapDes system to an even better platform for increased sales and sharpened customer service. A great example of how the capabilities of the PLM area have been stretched.
“The development of the CapDes configurator has taken place over many years, building on and adding to work that others have started,” said Andrew Farley, during this period CapDes’ manager at Hitachi Energy, according to PTC’s case story. “It’s not just the hard work of the current talented team, but many others before them who have created the ideas, laid the framework and contributed their knowledge. It’s a culture of collaboration that has been built within the company.”
Improved effectivity and lower costs
With the integration of multiple PTC products into their single CapDes System Hitachi had created a capable solution, which conducted back-end configuration of power system variables to create cost-optimized, customized designs and quotes. The system leveraged data from Windchill PLM and Creo CAD in a way that made, and makes, life easier for the sales engineers. By entering different part numbers into the system data associated with those parts is pulled from Windchill and fed into Creo, where a 3D model is automatically generated. From that model a 2D drawing is generated and shown to the customer to help them visualize a potential design solution. The entire solution design is then saved and stored within Windchill, allowing sales engineers to access and adapt the design as needed.
But Hitachi wanted to move further ahead. To do this, they leveraged PTC’s augmented reality (AR) solutions in the Vuforia suite for the next, immersive phase of the project.
The effects were interesting: The augmented reality (AR) in CapDes configurator for capacitors and filters significantly improved the speed and quality of the sales tendering process, empowering the sales team to find solutions to customers requirements. The configurator has unique features that allow generation of optimized capacitor designs, quick and correct documentation and tenders, as well as calculation of costs.
In fact, the CapDes configurator generates optimized capacitor designs, creates 3D models and calculates cost automatically within a day. This means a more cost-efficient solution and frees up time to work on up to five times more projects within the same duration. The cost of the solutions can be reduced by 10% giving access to previously cost competitive markets.
But there’s more: The company has seen a noticeable reduction in manual engineering work – knowledge is moved from people’s “heads” to systems by automating typical engineering work.
“The precise and detailed design at the bid stage gives our sales teams the confidence to enter customer discussions with the information they need to negotiate from a position of strength. It removes the uncertainty when you know exactly how the solution will be built and what it will cost,” according to Farley, in PTC’s case study.
Capacitors and filters
“At Hitachi Energy, they know the value of an efficient power grid,” PTC notes in its case story. “A reduction in power quality can affect the capacity of the entire grid and everyone connected to it. To address power quality issues, Hitachi Energy offers capacitors and filters—highly customized systems that improve the power quality of electrical networks by eliminating disturbances and improving efficiency.”
If they are well-matched to the system, these components can sharpen the power quality of electrical networks by eliminating interference and improving efficiency. But this requires a high degree of customization and, in short, they must be designed for individual system adaptation, a process that requires a great deal of expertise in different fields.
This is by no means easy. Philip Bengtsson, Technology Project Manager at Hitachi Energy, notes in the PTC case study that this could previously be difficult for customers to visualize. Each product was unique and there was no ready-made catalog to refer to for photos and diagrams and other things.
Vuforia a logical fit
for Windchill and Creo CAD
This is where PTC’s AR software, Vuforia, can be a savier. The technology is pedagogically just right and has exactly the features required to improve the customer experience, improve purchasing confidence and increase sales efficiency. With 3D glasses, or, via a tablet, you can immersively step directly into the individual design that has been developed. This changed a lot, claimed Bengtsson:
”These are not products that most people are familiar with. It’s different if you buy a car, for example. Everyone knows what a car looks like and how it should work, but if you want to buy a capacitor solution, people have a hard time understanding what they are actually going to get. Each solution looks different because they are configured in a different way.”
The addition of the AR technology in Vuforia was an appropriate investment not only for the visual capabilities that came with the implementation, but also because Vuforia is a logical fit with PTC’s other products. Everything is connected and compatible from a single platform, where Windchill PLM and Creo CAD were already in the DesCap system. In other words, Hitachi had the experience of PTC products and thought in a way that facilitated the implementation.
“It felt quite natural that we started working with Vuforia Studio because we were already using Creo Parametric and storing all the models in Windchill – so the two were already very well integrated in how we worked,” Bengtsson added.
Stepping into a complete digital representation of the product
Hitachi Energy knew that to scale its business and improve customer support, it needed to optimize these custom-designed solutions through an automated process – and then develop new ways to service them. Over time, they updated some software to optimize the design, but the journey towards improvement never really ends. Hitachi Energy realized that they had all the knowledge they needed, and if they could build a better, larger platform, they could easily automate not least the sales process.
Vuforia Studio was an effective AR environment that allowed Hitachi Energy to leverage its existing 3D CAD models to create immersive AR experiences based on variants specified in its CapDes System Configurator software.
The AR experiences created in Vuforia Studio allowed the customer to see a full-scale digital representation of the proposed solution in their own environment, showing its exact placement within the larger grid. This allowed the customer to ensure that the solution met their specifications before the final system was built and shipped. AR has also eliminated the need for customers to rely on paper drawings, written instructions, and generic installation guides, all in favor of a more personalized and faster solution.
Finally, in addition to the AR project, the redeveloped CapDes system is in place across 13 global sales and engineering offices, and Hitachi Energy has seen huge time and money savings, leading to further growth.
