Engineering.com can reveal that the world's largest truck manufacturer, Daimler Trucks, is replacing its older product database system SMARAGD with Siemens Digital Industries Software's cPDm software Teamcenter. SMARAGD has been in use by Daimler since at least the year 2000.
This has been stated by sources within the company.
The new system based on Teamcenter will be known as Platon, and will become the PLM backbone within the company, replacing the legacy system SMARAGD. Among other things, Bill of Material (BOM) management, which is critical to profitability, will be handled within the framework of the new Teamcenter platform.
According to engineering.com’s research when Daimler Trucks swapped systems back in 2015 - 2016, it was a deal containing around 5,500 to 6,500 seats. Though the figures have not yet been confirmed, it is reasonable to assume that we’re talking about numbers in the same neighborhood in today’s deal. Moreover, there is no doubt that Daimler Truck's investment is a big deal.
On the CAD and product design page, Daimler Trucks is already working in Siemens' flagship product NX. This venture has its roots in an implementation of the software in 2015 – 2016 (read more about this journey here). At the time, the truck and bus division was included as a business unit within the Daimler Mercedes group, but it has since been spun off into its own listed company.
The World’s Number One Truck Producer
As a corporately independent vehicle manufacturer, Daimler Trucks is the world's largest manufacturer of heavy trucks and has approximately 100,000 employees. The company unites various brands under one roof, including: Freightliner, Western Star, Thomas Built Buses, Mercedes-Benz, Setra, BharatBenz and FUSO.
In 2021, Daimler Truck’s revenues landed at around $45 billion, which made the company significantly larger than both the Volvo Group and Volkswagen Group in the truck revenue area.
Daimler Trucks has also previously worked in Siemens Digital Industries Software environments on the PLM side. Among other things, the database system SMARAGD is built on Teamcenter's predecessor, Metaphase.
In addition, the company has recently made other major investments in software from Siemens; for example, on the simulation and analysis side where it has a major installation of StarCCM+, which we reported at the beginning of the year.
Tough Battle Against PTC’s Windchill
Daimler Trucks is a global player that has great weight in the industry, that now chooses to build its product development environment primarily on Siemens software. My qualified guess is that Daimler Trucks’ route into the future will be based on digital twins according to Siemens' concept—and preferably also with Siemens software.
Engineering.com also learned that the final battle for which solution Daimler Truck would choose was between Siemens Digital Industries Software and PTC's cPDm solution Windchill.
Switched to NX CAD in 2015-16
The background here is that the Daimler Group took a big step towards the environment it has today with the decision around 2015 to phase out Dassault Systèmes’ CAD software CATIA V5, in order to switch to a pure product development environment based on Siemens' flagship product in CAD, NX.
The fact that they are now moving ahead and expanding the Siemens environment on the cPDm side, with Teamcenter replacing the previous configuration database and legacy solution SMARAGD, means that the solution will, among other things, handle the BOM production, which is one of the automotive industry's most success-critical parts.
After all, few pieces are more critical to success in vehicle development than BOM data, product structures and configuration, and having effective digital tools to manage this is essential. Configuration and BOM management are, in short, the bread and butter of the vehicle industry. Manufacturing is literally about producing millions of BOMs every year. Bottom line, BOM management is closely linked to how well a company will succeed in business—and is perhaps one of the most critical factors in creating profitability.
An Industry Undergoing Dramatic Change
Today's disclosure is partly an indication that other Siemens installations work well, and partly that the technological practice and vision demonstrated by Siemens for Daimler Truck is at such a level that it is considered to be able to cover the future needs in e-Mobility.
The latter is of great importance at a time when the automotive industry is being fundamentally reshaped, primarily with the electrification of all vehicle models, but also related to the development of autonomy, which will entail major changes in how transport concepts are rebuilt. The development of battery solutions and interaction in the context of vehicles is also significant.
One other interesting aspect of today's announcement about Daimler Trucks' switch to Teamcenter is the implications this may have regarding the company's joint project with the Volvo Group around hydrogen solutions, in the separate jointly-owned company Cellcentric. It does not seem unreasonable that Siemens solutions will also be used in this company, even if the Volvo Group is currently moving towards a revamp of its PLM environment based on PTC's PLM suite Windchill and CAD software Creo.