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Today’s automotive market is defined by speed and adaptation. Once comfortable with 200- to 220-week development cycles, European OEMs now compete with new players like NIO, which has compressed those timelines to nearly half. But while competition heats up, many manufacturers face the same bottleneck: their process engineering teams are bogged down by outdated workflows and limited access to efficient tools.
Recognizing the urgent need to stay competitive, one leading European OEM launched a sweeping cost-reduction initiative aimed at saving billions of euros and accelerating production.
During this effort, the OEM’s Head of Digital Solutions and Flow Department realized that modern digital tools could mitigate production bottlenecks. However, steep software training demands, protracted 12-week design tasks, and prohibitively high CAD license fees made large-scale adoption challenging. These constraints prevented process engineers from quickly acting on improvement ideas, ultimately slowing production schedules.
In analyzing their established workflows, the OEM pinpointed four primary issues:
These limitations prevented process engineers from contributing directly to improvement projects, resulting in stalled workflows and a growing backlog of unaddressed design challenges.
When faced with mounting delays and a growing backlog of unimplemented improvement ideas, this European OEM conducted a detailed study to find the best CAD solution for their process engineering teams. The evaluation compared tools like CATIA, Fusion 360, and Shapr3D, using key criteria such as onboarding speed, scalability, usability, and the ability to reduce equipment design timelines.
Shapr3D emerged as a strong candidate based on the following attributes:
The adoption of Shapr3D profoundly and immediately affected the OEM’s operations, particularly in addressing long-standing bottlenecks in their process engineering workflows. With traditional CAD tools, equipment design often took up to 12 weeks, stretching production schedules and limiting the company’s ability to implement continuous improvement initiatives. Shapr3D changed this dynamic completely.
By replacing legacy CAD systems with an intuitive, mobile-first solution, the OEM’s process engineers reduced equipment design timelines by 50%, completing projects in six weeks instead of 12. This acceleration allowed the company to keep pace with tightening production deadlines while freeing valuable time to address new improvement opportunities.
Beyond speed, Shapr3D fostered a level of cross-departmental collaboration that had previously been unattainable. Teams from logistics, prototyping, and ergonomics, who once worked in silos, were now able to co-create designs in real-time. For example, the logistics team, which had long relied on external CAD designers for equipment studies, could now independently design and validate 3D models for critical tools like trolleys and fixtures. This shift saved weeks of back-and-forth and ensured that designs were aligned with on-the-ground realities from the start.
One standout example of Shapr3D’s impact was in the logistics department, where equipment design and validation processes were historically bottlenecked by slow iteration cycles. With Shapr3D, process engineers used tablets to refine designs on the shop floor, validate them in real time, and implement changes within hours rather than weeks. This capability accelerated production workflows and reduced the risk of costly errors.
This case offers valuable insights for manufacturers aiming to streamline workflows and enhance productivity:
As automotive manufacturing becomes increasingly competitive, tools that support rapid iteration and broad collaboration are becoming more important. By shifting from traditional CAD platforms to Shapr3D, this European OEM realized a faster, more inclusive equipment design process. In doing so, they established a model for continuous improvement that leverages accessibility, mobility, and cost savings to streamline product development.
The OEM’s experience suggests that a user-friendly, mobile-ready CAD solution can be instrumental for organizations aiming to shorten timelines and involve more stakeholders in design. In this instance, Shapr3D not only accelerated workflow but also fostered an environment where process engineers, logistics teams, and ergonomics specialists worked together to develop practical and innovative solutions.